The audacious sidestep, after 15 years circling steadily upwards through the higher echelons of Victoria's key education agencies, was followed by a second such move to Hong Kong as deputy toformer education secretary Arthur Li Kwok-cheung.

His official remit as head of the Education Bureau's curriculum and quality assurance branch concealed an enormous job overseeing 900 staff and a HK$1 billion budget in which he piloted a raft of reforms across the kindergarten, primary and secondary and university sectors.

Mr Wardlaw planned the HK$2 billion kindergarten voucher scheme and the introduction of higher professional requirements for kindergarten and language teachers over recent years.

He modernised the primary school curriculum, bringing in a reading programme and teaching of core skills such as critical thinking and creativity for every pupil.

He set objective standards for the primary and junior secondary years against which students' performance can be measured. He revamped the school inspection process and helped to set up the Hong Kong Academy of Gifted Education.

And last, but certainly not least, he helped the bureau come up with a new curriculum, a school-leaving diploma and HK$16 billion funding for the new three-year senior secondary programme being launched next year that will lead into four-year degrees starting in 2012.

Yet for all the long hours spent sitting in front of Legislative Council panels and puzzling over the idiosyncrasies of Hong Kong's education system, Mr Wardlaw never gave up his personal passion for long-distance running - and it may even have helped the educational design process.

As well as his regular lunchtime 40-minute sprint up to The Peak from his Wan Chai office, he took longer weekend runs along Hong Kong's country trails. He counts the Dragon's Back, Pat Sin Range and Ma On Shan among his favourites.

'Running for me is a lifestyle,' he said. 'I enjoy the perseverance. I work while I run. When I'm running, I often get clarity on an issue. Often I'll come back and get a blank sheet of paper and write down things that have become clearer.'

Mr Wardlaw said the redesign he was most proud of was his modernisation plan for the school inspection system. The old system of external review by inspectors, in which schools were only visited on average once every 20 years, was upgraded to a four- to six-year cycle.

The inspection team was strengthened with a new cadre of supporting professionals, including academics and retired principals, and schools were taught to supplement external review with self-evaluation.

'The school development and accountability framework is a highly professional and extremely well-balanced and rigorous framework,' he said. 'We moved over the past decade from an accountability framework that wasn't helpful to schools and the community.

'The work has been terrific. Now we have a very good balance between internal and external review. Our study shows more than 70 per cent of schools believe the process has brought added value and I think that's a really positive response.'

The framework was helpful in identifying differences in performance between schools, which were sharper in Hong Kong than in many developed countries.

And it was now being used to help narrow the gap between high- and low-performing schools - an essential development for system-wide success, which depended on having large numbers of schools that were good enough to attract parents from all walks of life.

But the heart of the reform process is the switch from a narrow, knowledge-based curriculum marked by early specialisation into arts or sciences, to a broader study pattern including skills and knowledge, that gives students more choices at senior secondary level and encourages them to think for themselves.

Mr Wardlaw, who also oversaw the consultations over the senior secondary reforms, said they were now backed by a solid public and professional consensus despite the postponement of school-based assessment for some subjects because teachers were not ready.

'On school-based assessment we have had a number of consultations, and we have a broad agreement with the sector,' he said. 'Of course the professional unions will use some of these issues as lightning rods - but that's just natural in any reform.'

Mr Wardlaw said his parallel career as an Olympic athlete and coach was 'absolutely complementary' to his professional one. Both involved 'getting the best out of people and everybody reaching their potential, doing the best they possibly can and overcoming obstacles'.

'I have been very lucky in my life to be involved in with coaching of sports athletes and the work with Cathy Freeman in 2000,' he said. 'She had all the impossible pressure of expectations. She was a young woman, she was indigenous and a lot of the aspirations of Australia were upon her.

'There is a lot of congruence between what I believe about sport and what is in the Hong Kong curriculum. I believe it will deliver the right balance of pressure and support for Hong Kong students.

'I often use the term 'pressure is a privilege'. When you are under pressure, it means that people have expectations of you. Improvement comes from a combination of pressure and support - but certainly there can be excessive pressure.

'We have done a lot of great work in what I call 'opening up the curriculum'. The reduction from two high-stakes exams to the diploma is a wonderful single achievement, which will open up secondary learning to a large extent.

'I believe it will deliver the right balance of pressure and support for Hong Kong students and that over time the system changes will lead to quite substantial improvements.'

One of the key findings about Hong Kong's performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study was that students' confidence was lower than that of their peers abroad.

'I think that is the result of a lot of what I would call 'early strain' under the existing system,' Mr Wardlaw said. 'But if you get the system right, that builds students' confidence in their own learning.

'And then I don't see how any other nation in the world will be able to compete with Hong Kong students, because they are already so high in their performance.'

Mr Wardlaw came to Hong Kong on a three-year contract, added one year, and then more as the deadline for the reforms was extended. He finally added another six months that happily coincided with the Beijing Olympics, which he attended.

'If I was a younger man, there is no way I would have gone home,' he said. 'But there comes a time when the call of home comes along. I love the trails in the city parks. They are a hidden treasure. The whole geography of Hong Kong I will miss terribly and I will always come back.

'I'm finishing my contract with the Hong Kong government and I'm going home to Melbourne. I'm available to work on challenging and interesting and important tasks. If it's important and valuable, I will do it. But if it isn't, I will go to the cinema and continue my running.'