To teach Physical Education (PE) effectively teachers require too meet many new and different demands. Previous models of teacher education had a relatively restricted focus on developing activity based expertise in the sports which underpin PE programmes. This form of apprenticeship designed to develop applied craft knowledge appears of modest benefit for a subject, which is now offered as an examination subject, with students completing awards in PE to indicate readiness for entry to higher education. The dominance now of examination curriculum has been referred to as the 'new orthodoxy' (Green, 2001) yet research shows than many teachers have found operational difficulty in putting rationale and policy into effective practice which leads to high levels of authentic attainment. Thorburn and Collins (2003) completed research on teacher effectiveness and curriculum decision-making in high stakes school PE examinations in Scotland. The authors found that some PE teachers were more adaptive to change in terms of the fine detail of their applied pedagogy practices than others and that some experienced teachers teaching in novel situations were able to show a more advanced form of flexible control (Griffey and Housner, 1991) than others. To date, however, research into the antecedents of expertise has often focussed on ITE programmes (Rovegno, 1994) but, with a few exceptions (Schempp, 1993; Schempp et. al., 1998), little research has taken place on the changing levels of expertise of teachers in post. This is a curious omission bearing in mind the increasing age profile of teachers in the profession (SOED/HMI, 1995) and the diversity of programmes that PE departments might reasonably be expected to adopt in future years, if the subject is to remain relevant and of interest to students (Kirk and MacDonald, 1998). Thorburn and Collins (2003) concluded that much more needs to be done for the promotion of career-long professional development. Policy appears to be capable of far more rapid change than practice, except in a minority of talented and/or open-minded individuals.With this in mind the aim of this paper is to link research findings and review of professional literature to critically consider many of the priorities required for continuous professional development (CPD) issues for PE teachers in a high-stakes school examination. This review will consider shorter term professional and policy requirements as well as longer term antecedents of effective CPD programmes for developing professional reflection and empowerment and limited the dependency culture which appears to inform many staff CPD opportunities at present (McMahon, 1999). The paper will report specifically on the role of department ethos as a critical variable in the reduction of teacher stress, in the development of planned mentoring and peer observation and in developing a culture of department self improvement. As Ayers (2004) has noted the influence of mentoring in faculties and of reflecting analytically on practice appeared to be more effective as antecedents for improvements in student learning opportunities in high- stakes examinations than centrally directly in-service courses which were occasionally of merit, but which were generally cited as of limited specific relevance.