Description: We continue to live under the long shadow of the National Curriculum which was imposed on schools in Wales and England in 1988. This established a set of compulsory subjects to be taught and tightly defined their contents and, together with the coercive mechanisms of testing and external surveillance tightened the grip of central government. The impacts on schools, teachers and pupils have been well documented and point to frustration especially at the classroom level and the need for teachers to have more flexibility and responsibility. In Wales, since devolution there have already been a number of shifts in education policy which make it distinctive from England. For example: " In the field of teacher education and development, Wales has a unique continuum of provision through a one-year induction, two-year early professional development and a life-long learning entitlement to individual CPD through funding available from the General Teaching Council, Wales. " A move away from the culture of performativity through abandoning leagues tables, and ending of national testing for 7, 11and 14 year olds. " The encouragement of partnership and collaboration in the field of educational policy and practice, as evidenced in the Learning Country, (2001), which is in sharp contrast to the command and control culture prevalent in England Attention has recently turned to the promotion of what has been termed a 'National Pedagogy Initiative' with the prime aim of promoting greater flexibility in learning and teaching through a sharing of innovative practices across the 5 to 19 age range. Although this is an initiative introduced by the Minister for Education and Lifelong Learning, influenced practices observed in New South Wales, Australia, it sets out to be non-prescriptive by involving practitioners from the outset and by responding to their needs and interests. This paper charts the early 'career' of this initiative. It also locates it in the wider policy context in Wales, reports on early progress and the five-year strategy to take forward the initiative and, finally, it draws on recent research on teacher professional development to offer an analytical framework to inform the next stages of the initiative. Methodology: The paper draws on a variety of secondary sources, documentary sources including policy documents in Wales, records of the meetings of the National Pedagogy Committee and accounts of the first National Pedagogy Conference to construct the 'career' of the initiative and the wider policy context. Recent research evidence on teacher professional development is used to construct an analytical framework which is used to interrogate the early stages of the initiative and to identify future challenges. Conclusions: As indicated above, the main outcome of the paper is not just to indicate the increasing policy divergence of Wales and England but also to focus on the early 'career' of the National Pedagogy Initiative and to provide a test of its current and expected outcomes.