Australian Story S30E09 - Class Wars: Murat Dizdar

Murat Dizdar is the Secretary of the NSW Department of Education, responsible for more than 2200 public schools and almost 800,000 students. And he's on a mission to stem the flow of students to private schools and claw back funding from the federal government.

For Dizdar, the son of Turkish migrants raised in council housing, this mission is personal.

"I stunk of working class," he tells Australian Story. "I stunk of what work looked like. And I don't mind when I reminisce about that odour because that odour was hard-earned. It taught me that to get your way there was no shortcut. I've always been in the in the corner of the battler, the working class and that's why I'm also so passionate about public education."

Dizdar thrived in the public system and received one of the highest HSC marks in the state. The expectation was that he would study law or medicine, and he chose law. But while working in a law firm as a student he realised he had to follow his true passion – teaching.

A notoriously hard worker, Dizdar worked his way to the top of the department, only resting for nine days after a serious heart attack.

"Absolutely read him the riot act after the heart attack," his wife Ceyda Dizdar says. "And I remember distinctly him saying to me, ‘I'm fine. I'm fine. Can you bring my laptop?'"

Australian Story was granted extraordinary access to Murat Dizdar as he undertook the fight of his life – to secure an extra $800 million per year in funding and start the process of winning back students to public education.

"Murat has got the right idea, in my opinion," former justice of the High Court Michael Kirby tells Australian Story. "For most of the time I was on the High Court, I was the only justice whose entire education had been at public schools. For a long time now, the federal government has been the donor of very, very large amounts of funding to private and religious schools and they've done that to the damage of public schools."

The episode also features interviews with NSW Education Minister Prue Car, former public school alumnus and Socceroo Craig Foster, and former colleague and now state minister Jihad Dibb.