Murat Dizdar has three very good reasons to ensure NSW’s education system is the best in Australia, if not the world: his children, who attend public schools.

“My own children are in the system because I know what we provide inside our classrooms and inside the school gate is as good, if not better, than anywhere else,” Mr Dizdar, Acting Secretary of the NSW Department of Education, says.

“That has to be the case, because 800,000 children and their future lives depend on us.”

As a product of the public school system himself and a former teacher and principal, Mr Dizdar knows the transformative power of public education, and will be the first public school teacher to lead the department since 2016.

He arrived in Australia aged one month from Turkey with his sister and parents, none of whom spoke English. His story mirrors the experience of many migrant families, where parents work day and night, instilling in their children a work ethic and belief in a better life.

The Dizdars lived in the inner-city suburb of Summer Hill and spent time in housing commission accommodation. It was teachers who identified his talent and encouraged him to take the selective exam, which saw him secure a place at Fort Street High School, whose alumni include some of the nation’s pre-eminent legal minds.

Finishing dux in his year and achieving a near-perfect HSC mark, Mr Dizdar did what any migrant child would do - chose between law and medicine. It was the former path he followed, and while at the University of Sydney law school he met his wife, Ceyda.

However, during those early years of university, Mr Dizdar had a secret passion that he admits he feared sharing with his parents.

“From my early high school years, I knew I wanted to be a teacher,” he recalls.

“Mr Griffiths, Ms Johanson, Mr Baker and Mr Sturm all changed my life at Fort Street High School in ways they will have never known. They were passionate, dedicated and inspirational teachers who made their subjects worth studying and school worth attending.

“They were teachers who told me where to look but not what to see. I wanted to be like them as they exemplified the transformative power of outstanding education.”

Midway through law, he swapped across to teaching, shocking his family and friends. “It did rattle everyone,” he admits, “but I never doubted from the first time I stepped into a classroom that I had found my calling.”

That ‘calling’ started at Ashcroft High School in 1997, before Mr Dizdar became head of social sciences at Belmore Boys’ High School. In 2005 he was appointed principal of Punchbowl Boys’ High School - winning an award for school cultural change - before moving across to the corporate side of the department and leading School Performance.