Vaccination Records for School in the UK: Translating a Foreign Immunisation Record for the GP and School Nurse

UKHSA's guidance for vaccinators in England has a section with a blunt title: "What to do if a vaccinator is unable to translate an immunisation history into English." The answer takes one sentence. The child "should be assumed to be unimmunised, and a full course of immunisations should be planned."

For a family arriving with a booklet of stamps, handwritten dates and abbreviations such as КПК, VOP or TV, that is the difference between a quick top-up and a course of injections started from scratch. The GP practice and the school immunisation team need the record, and they need to see every dose.

Below: school places, who uses the record, how doses from abroad are counted, what the translation must show and the abbreviations that cause trouble.

Does my child need vaccinations to start school in the UK?

No. "In the UK the vaccination of children is not compulsory," as a 2020 Court of Appeal judgment put it, quoting an earlier case; it is a decision "which the State entrusts to parents."

In England, the School Admissions Code adds two protections. Admission authorities must not ask, on their forms, for "details about parents' or a child's disabilities, special educational needs, or medical conditions" (paragraph 2.4). And when a child applies during the school year, a school with places available, grammar schools aside, "must offer a place to every child who has applied for one, without condition" (paragraph 2.28), unless admitting them would prejudice efficient education or use of resources.

Vaccination enters school life through health, not admission. In England, the children's flu vaccine is offered in school from reception to year 11, HPV in year 8, and the MenACWY and Td/IPV teenage booster in year 9, with MMR or MMRV checked and offered to anyone who missed it. NHS School Aged Immunisation Services (SAIS) run those sessions and send consent forms home.

Who asks for your child's vaccination record?

Usually three services:

1. The GP practice. Register your child as soon as you arrive. The NHS website says you do not need proof of immigration status, though for a child you may be asked for proof of ID and address, such as a birth certificate, and "It can help to provide their personal child health record (red book), if you have it." A child born abroad has their home country's record instead, and UKHSA tells practitioners to "always ask new migrants about their vaccine history." See GP registration and foreign medical records.
2. The school immunisation team, which works from returned consent forms and also reaches "children who are not registered with a GP."
3. The health visitor, for children under 5. UKHSA tells nurseries to point unsure parents to "the health visitor or their GP."

How do UK nurses count vaccines given abroad?

By UK rules, dose by dose. Children "coming to the UK part way through their immunisation schedule should be transferred onto the UK schedule and immunised as appropriate for age", and a course already started is resumed with "no need to repeat doses or restart course". "Unless there is a documented or reliable verbal vaccine history," the child is treated as unimmunised, because extra doses are "preferable" to leaving a child "susceptible to disease."

Specific rules then decide whether each foreign dose counts:

• Oral polio drops: "If an individual has received any OPV in another country since April 2016, these doses should be discounted," as they are unlikely to protect against all three polio types. Injected IPV doses count.
• Measles vaccines before the first birthday: measles, mumps, rubella or varicella-containing doses given before 12 months "should not be counted", and two doses of MMR or MMRV are given whatever the child's history of the diseases.
• MR is not MMR: some countries use a measles and rubella vaccine without mumps, so UKHSA tells vaccinators to identify "the disease vaccinated against", not just the vaccine.
• Pneumococcal: a PCV10 dose given abroad means one extra PCV13 dose; PCV13, PCV15 or PCV20 given from 12 weeks counts.
• Also valid: whole-cell pertussis ("wP"), HPV doses from age 9 and MenACWY doses from age 10.
• BCG is the exception. It "should not be administered to previously vaccinated individuals", and evidence includes "documentary evidence, a clear, reliable history of vaccination, or evidence of a characteristic scar."

Each rule turns on something written on the record: drops or injection, the date, the exact combination. A translation that says "polio, 3 doses" has thrown the answer away.

Which vaccines are on the UK schedule from September 2026?

The childhood schedule changed on 1 July 2025 and again on 1 January 2026, when MMRV (adding chickenpox protection) and an 18-month appointment arrived. The GP matches your child's record against it:

BCG is not routine in the UK. The Green Book offers it selectively, including to "previously unvaccinated, tuberculin-negative individuals under 16 years of age" who were born in, or lived for at least three months in, a country with an annual TB incidence of 40 per 100,000 or more.

What should a vaccination record translation show?

Everything a clinician needs to count each dose, in the order of the original:

• The child's name as in the passport, with date of birth, so the practice can match the record.
• One line per dose: date, vaccine name or abbreviation exactly as written, dose number or booster, and batch or lot number.
• Every abbreviation expanded in brackets after the original, such as "КПК [measles, mumps, rubella]".
• Brand names unchanged. Pentaxim stays Pentaxim; the translator does not guess what it contains.
• The route, where shown: oral drops or injection.
• Unambiguous dates: 4 March 2019, not 04/03/19, because countries order day and month differently.
• Tests kept apart from vaccines: a tuberculin (Mantoux) skin test is a test, with a date and a reading in millimetres. UKHSA's advice on arrivals from Ukraine offers BCG to under-16s without a BCG history who are tuberculin negative, so both entries matter.
• Exemptions, reactions and allergies the clinic recorded.
• Stamps, signatures and clinic names in brackets, and the back of every card.
• Anything unreadable marked [illegible], never guessed.

The translator translates and the nurse decides. A translation should never call a child "fully vaccinated" unless the original says exactly that. For other clinical documents, see medical records translation.

Which abbreviations on foreign records cause problems?

Local abbreviations and combination vaccines:

Does a vaccination record need a certified translation?

Not for a GP or school nurse. Neither NHS registration guidance nor UKHSA's catch-up guidance asks for certification; they need a history the vaccinator can rely on. A certified translation is still practical when the record goes to several services, because it is complete, dated, signed and traceable to the translator.

A phone app is the weak option. UKHSA's advice to GPs on arrivals from Ukraine says "Mobile phone translation apps are not recommended as these cannot be relied on to accurately interpret health-related information."

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Public Health Scotland, Public Health Wales and nidirect describe the same schedule changes on 1 July 2025 and 1 January 2026, including MMRV and the 18-month appointment, so the same translated record serves in Edinburgh, Cardiff or Belfast.

Wales runs a chickenpox catch-up, one MMRV dose for eligible children from 3 years 4 months to just under 6, from 1 November 2026 to 31 March 2028. The UKHSA guidance quoted here is written for England, and admissions law differs by nation; see school enrolment with foreign records.

Why foreign vaccination records get misread

• A summary instead of a list: "vaccinated according to the national calendar" gives the nurse nothing to count.
• "Polio" with no route, so drops and injections cannot be told apart.
• A brand or "hexavalent" alone, where the record itself names the diseases.
• Mantoux results listed as vaccinations, or BCG left out.
• A name spelled differently from the passport, so the record cannot be matched.
• Missing pages, typically the school-age boosters.

Checklist: before you take a foreign vaccination record to the GP or school

Questions people ask