The corona pandemic and participatory governance: Responding to the vulnerabilities of secondary school students in Europe

Adolescents in secondary schools have limited susceptibility to the SARS-COV-2 virus, but para- doxically are considered to be carrying the highest psychosocial burden during this pandemic. The aim of our European multi-country qualitative research was to investigate the COVID-19 cri- sis response in secondary schools and the role of national, regional, and local stakeholders in con- tributing to a participatory governance approach. We carried out 11 months of qualitative field- work, which included 90 respondents from the Netherlands, Ireland, and Finland for in-depth in- terviews and/or group discussions. Participant observation was conducted in four secondary schools to explore the interplay of day-to-day formal and informal practices of crisis governance. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of what efforts were made to facilitate partici- patory governance and where a bottom-up approach would have served useful in successfully im- plementing the COVID-19 mitigation strategies. Moreover, we show how these mitigation strate- gies have led to unintended consequences, such as students’ difficulties with isolation and associ- ated mental health problems, and the struggles of socialization when returning to a physical school environment. Our findings highlight the importance of the school environment in the so- cio-emotional developments of adolescents. We introduce the TAPIC-R model to analyze good governance, advancing the existing TAPIC model with an emphasis on the role of resilience in shaping participatory governance. We argue this is urgently needed during crises to strengthen engagement of the community, including vulnerable groups and achieve positive outcomes within and across policy structures and action domains.