Governance Maturity for Agentic School Leadership: A Governmentality Informed Comparative Analysis of Governance Systems

The role of governance in school leadership is well established, yet high‑profile failures continue to expose systemic weaknesses. This article reports a comparative study of school governance in Manitoba, Canada and England. Using governmentality, it examines governance arrangements to provide a theoretical and empirical analysis of governance maturity. The analysis informed refinement of Governance Maturity Theory and the Governance Maturity digital platform. While grounded in England and Canada, the article argues for rethinking school governance – and post‑industrial governance more broadly – locally, nationally and globally, thus positioning mature, agentic governance as central to strategic leadership and executive accountability.