KEY POINTS:
The Secretary of Education is brandishing an ornately decorated silver dagger with a very business-like blade.
"Do you use it for teachers' contract negotiations?" the Herald asks, about the gift from an official from the Sultanate of Oman.
"No," Howard Fancy retorts. "It's for budget rounds."
After 10
years in the role and 34 in the public service, Howard Fancy is handing the dagger on to Karen Sewell, who will take over the role he vacated yesterday.
"When I came into this job one of the things that really struck me was two-thirds of the letters I got were of commiseration rather than congratulations," Mr Fancy says now.
He came in hot on the heels of a major report by Don Hunn warning that the ministry had "lost its way" and was struggling to put policies into action.
Critics of Mr Fancy, who came from Treasury where he worked on the Think Big energy projects of the 1980s and the passing of the Reserve Bank Act, were plenty. Former Prime Minister David Lange described him as a Treasury gnome who would run education like a biscuit factory.
The PPTA president of the time also had a go, anticipating a future of horn-locking with teachers.
As a last straw, in the first week of his tenure the payroll system failed so the teachers weren't paid.
He's leaving after nearly 35 years in the public service, simply because "it feels about time to move on. And I am looking forward to having more of a weekend. It's been a sort of exciting 10 years. I think the job has changed quite enormously over that time and the focus of the system has changed enormously."
Perhaps because he was from Treasury, one of his aims was to keep a closer eye on the education version of Gross Domestic Product: students' brains.
"In Treasury, it might be how to get the economy growing faster or get in a better fiscal position. In education, it's how to get more kids leaving school with better qualifications, more kids entering tertiary education, more in early childhood, more achieving well in reading."
So New Zealand now takes part in domestic and international testing such as PISA, the Programme for International Student Assessment, a three-yearly survey of 15-year-olds in over 40 countries.
He thinks the ultimate aim of a school is for "kids to come out who are well equipped to be good New Zealand and global citizens".
This has been drummed in from visits to schools, which he makes a point of doing because "I don't think the answer is just sitting in Wellington designing policy".
He remembers watching students from Ruatoria making an animation video and hearing they emailed "Richard" for advice. "I asked who Richard was, and they said: 'You know. Richard [Taylor] of Weta. He's in China at the moment, but he still answers his emails.' These were 5-year-olds.
"I've learned to type in the last few years and all that. But that shows what kids are capable of doing when they are unconstrained. They're not scared of technology and those very young kids are quite global."
It hasn't all been fun. He's had to go to small rural communities to tell them he was closing their schools.
In 2002, teachers went on strike after he published full-page newspaper advertisements to justify the ministry's stance on the employment negotiations.
Mr Fancy was there to drag NCEA into the world and then to try to sell it to teachers, employers, parents and students. He had to cop the flak as its various idiosyncrasies were ironed out.
Mr Fancy says the improved flexibility means fewer children leave school without qualifications.
He thinks NCEA has become a "shorthand for a lot of issues" and all the brouhaha makes people lose sight of how strong New Zealand's education really is.
"In the vast majority of surveys, New Zealand is is the top half of the OECD. Our 15-year-olds are in the second-highest performing groups of countries for reading, maths and science literacy."
He thinks lifts in achievement at the bottom end are happening, among Pasifika and Maori children and those in low-decile schools, but only in pockets where specific targeted help is in place.
The challenge is to apply the tricks that work in those pockets more universally.
"We've got a really good system, but if we could lift the tail of underachievement without compromising the kids who are already excelling in any way, you could see New Zealand become top of the league. There's still work to be done. "
As of this week it won't be his job to do it.
He'll be packing for a month's holiday in Vietnam, then a family Christmas and then a trip to Canada, where his eldest daughter is a ski instructor.
After that, he'll poke around for some work - "sort of project work, consulting around a broad range of public policy issues".
His departure this week coincides with meetings by primary school teachers to discuss their demands for the next round of their pay negotiations.
Mr Fancy swears he's not leaving now just to avoid the stoush when the teachers' three-year contract ends next year. But he is leaving that Omani dagger behind.
