A better approach to include unique meta tags across pages that share a universal header

I currently have a website that uses PHP to include a header.php file across all of my pages. This file contains the HTML for my menu bar and head tags that include my meta tags, links to my scripts and style sheets. The problem I am having with this approach is that I do not want all of my pages to share the same meta tags.

What is considered the best practice to include unique meta tags for each page but still achieve the benefits of a template approach where a universal header is used across all pages on a website.

I am looking for answers that propose a better design principle in general rather than a particular solution in PHP, I am open minded to any frameworks, languages or server side platforms that may be needed to achieve better design practices overall.