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Dutch to English translations [PRO] Social Sciences - Education / Pedagogy
Dutch term or phrase:schoolloopbaan
Het verloop van het schooltraject afgelegd door leerlingen, in het kader van een vergelijking van schoolloopbanen van kinderen van verschillende sociale klassen.
Het HPP Lohman Sociaal Woordenboek Engels geeft 'educational career', maar dit zou misbegrepen worden als een carriere (leraar of pedagoog) in het onderwijs, dus ik wijs die versie van de hand. Elk gebruik van 'career' in deze context lijkt me trouwens verdacht.
What is bothering you, I think, is that you are associating the word "career" with "work" whereas the word is really more to do with a progression. One could have a military career, or even a career in crime and it means what you do first and what you do second and how you progress. This is what is also meant by the Dutch loopbaan. Here we mean the series of steps involved in a child's education. "Schooling" encompasses the totality of the school experience - including the teaching, pedagogic techniques, etc. etc. which are not what is meant by loopbaan.
In the course of my work as partner of a Secretarial and Word Processing Bureau since 1979, I have typed innumerable reports for an educational psychologist whose job was to explore and highlight factors which were interfering with a child's educational career in all sorts of ways. Please believe me when I say this term is OK. I don't have time now to Google it.
Schoolloopbaan has 68,500 hits on Google. Educational career seems to get a lot of hits, but already on page 1, the words are used in translations, not in the right order or used in a different context.
This includes the entire 'loopbaan' from start to finish, examining the factors that may hold some children back. Educational career is NOT commonly used in that sense in English.
As I understand it from what you have said, this is a prospective study of children from different class backgrounds. Is the study limited to how they have done or succeeded or not succeeded in primary school? Or is it following them through beyond that point. If it is only focussed on primary school, then there is something to be said for using the more limited term of "School career". As for "school trajectory", this term is used so rarely, that you would probably have to define it first, before it had any meaning to the reader. It sometimes means not so much performance as choices - thus the humanities as against the sciences would be different trajectories. Vocational as against academic studies, etc. Career encompasses both.
I agree with Textpertise that there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the word career in this context - in fact, I've often seen it used like this.
"School career" might be an alternative, or the far less common "school trajectory".
The other would be teaching career.
The heading Educational Career appears in the typical curriculum vitae under which you list your education and qualifications. It means the course of your education, from grade school through secondary school to higher education or vocational training if applicable. You should not reject the use of this term.
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Answers
14 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +3
Educational career
Explanation: See discussion entry
Textpertise United Kingdom Local time: 11:39 Meets criteria Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 49
Grading comment
Thank you, also to Kitty & others for providing references.
Notes to answerer
Asker: On balance, this will do even for the UK, but Kitty Brussard provided the references that convinced me.
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +3
