Purpose: Following an explanation of the current policy context the paper addresses three particularly pressing challenges: the curriculum focus for physical education as part of health and wellbeing; the major implications for subject knowledge; and how translating curriculum change into professional learning and practice might feasibly occur. In analysing arguments associated with the intended curriculum focus we highlight the contrasting effects of curriculum prescription. These include times where lack of elaboration has hindered teachers in adequately grasping the scale and detail of curriculum ambitions sought and times where greater prescription has curtailed the rich diversity of experiences which are possible for pupils. In reviewing the implications for subject knowledge, the paper exemplifies how new developmental applications of change ideas could be implemented in physical education programmes in the early years of secondary schooling in ways which articulate more coherently with health and wellbeing and lifelong learning agendas than previous curriculum arrangements. In discussing how to translate curriculum change into professional learning and practice we outline how recent advances in developmental physical education have informed academic-led interventions aimed at supporting teaching communities in their professional learning. These initiatives potentially overtake some of the inertia caused through the mixed message reporting contained in official policy documents. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)