First-Time Driving Test Pass Rate by Centre: 30.9% to 68.5%

#How far apart UK centres sit on first-time pass rate

Wolverhampton passed 30.9 percent of its first-attempt candidates in 2024-25. Kendal (Oxenholme Road) passed 68.5 percent. That is a 37.6 point gap between two centres running the same test to the same national marking standard, and it is wider than the equivalent spread on the headline rate, which runs 33.4 to 66.7 percent, a range of 33.3 points. Filtering out retakes does not compress the geography. It stretches it.

The easy assumption is that the top of that list is all tiny rural centres with unstable samples. It is not. Ipswich sat 6,007 first attempts and passed 64.0 percent of them, more first-time candidates than Featherstone (5,198 at 32.6 percent) and Wolverhampton (4,544 at 30.9 percent) put together. Two centres of comparable size, 30 points apart. Meanwhile the busiest first-attempt centre in the country, Goodmayes (London), took 10,778 first attempts and passed 41.2 percent, and Welsh centres are the strongest regional showing near the top, with Newtown, Bangor, Abergavenny, Monmouth and Barry all inside the top 20.

#Where your centre probably sits in that range

The extremes get the attention, but most centres are not extreme. The 260 centres bunch tightly around the national figure: 150 of them, well over half, report a first-time rate between 45 and 55 percent. The tenth percentile is 40.0 percent and the ninetieth is 58.7 percent, so eight centres in ten sit inside an 18 point band. The tails are thin. Only 25 centres come in under 40 percent, only four under 35 percent, and only 16 clear 60 percent.

• Under 35 percent first-time: 4 centres, all of them West Midlands or outer London sites with heavy test volume
• Under 40 percent: 25 centres, roughly one in ten
• 40 to 45 percent: 33 centres
• 45 to 55 percent: 150 centres, the bulk of the country
• Above 55 percent: 52 centres
• Above 60 percent: 16 centres

Split at the national average and it comes out close to even: 132 centres above 48.9 percent, 124 below, 4 level with it. So the honest expectation for a reader who has not looked their centre up yet is a coin flip on which side of the average it falls, and a roughly one in ten chance it is a genuine outlier in either direction. Check it rather than assume it: the easiest centres ranking and the hardest centres ranking sort every rankable centre, and each centre page carries its own first-attempt count alongside the multi-year trend.

#What the first-time pass rate actually counts

DVSA records the attempt number against each candidate's licence file, so the first-attempt column in the per-centre data is exactly what it sounds like: tests sat by candidates who had never sat one before. Across the UK in 2024-25 that produced a 48.9 percent pass rate, against 48.7 percent for every test sat that year. The metric has been published on the same basis since the early 2010s and moves very little nationally, sitting in a 47 to 50 percent band year after year.

The reason it matters is not the national number, which barely differs from the headline. It is that the first-attempt column is the only one that describes the situation you are actually in when you book your first test. Everything else in the headline figure is somebody's second, third or fifth go.

#Overall pass rate against first-time pass rate

The two figures answer different questions, and most reporting quotes the first one while readers assume the second. Overall pass rate is per test: a candidate who fails three times then passes contributes one pass and three fails to it. First-time pass rate is per first attempt, so nobody appears in it twice.

At most centres the two barely part company. Across the 260 centres the average distance between them is about 1 percentage point: 155 centres are within a single point, 237 are within two, and only 11 in the whole country differ by more than three. First-time runs above the headline at 113 centres, below it at 142, and exactly level at 5. So when you look up a centre and the two numbers are almost the same, that is the norm, not a signal.

#When the gap between the two figures is worth a second look

The eleven centres where the two figures diverge by more than three points are worth naming, because most of them turn out to be a sample-size story rather than a difficulty story. Alnwick has the widest gap in the country, 58.1 percent first-time against 51.0 percent overall, on just 544 first attempts. Wallasey is next at 55.1 against 49.6 on 603. Both are small enough that a few dozen results move the number. The one wide-gap centre with real volume behind it is Blyth, 51.9 percent first-time against 47.2 percent overall on 3,207 first attempts, which is a genuine pattern rather than noise.

It runs the other way too. Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) posts 49.0 percent first-time against 53.2 percent overall, the widest negative gap in the data, again on a thin sample of 702. Wednesbury shows the same shape on much heavier volume: 33.2 percent first-time against 36.4 percent overall on 3,783 first attempts. That is the pattern actually worth acting on, a centre where the headline flatters what a first-timer should expect. The understanding pass rate statistics guide sets out the sample-size maths, and the short version is that any centre under about 1,000 first attempts carries a confidence band wide enough to swallow most of these gaps.

#Age moves the number too, and you cannot choose that one

Centre choice is the biggest single lever in the data, a 37.6 point spread. Age is the second, and it is not close to trivial: 17-year-olds pass at 60.7 percent while candidates aged 25 to 34 pass at 45.1 percent, a 15.6 point gap that holds year after year. The difference is mostly recency of instruction and total practice hours rather than anything about the test itself. The age-by-age research has the full curve and the pass rate by age guide covers what it means for booking.

Stack the two and the range is stark. A 17-year-old sitting a first test at a 60 percent centre and a 30-year-old sitting one at Wolverhampton are looking at the same 40 minutes and very different odds. Only one of those two inputs is yours to pick.

#What the first-time rate does not tell you

It does not predict your individual outcome. A 50 percent first-time rate means half of new candidates at that centre passed; your result turns on preparation, the drive on the day and the conditions. Treat it as a population signal that shifts your odds a few points, not as a personal probability.

It also says nothing about examiner behaviour. Marking is held to a single national standard, so the 37.6 point spread reflects route difficulty, traffic density and who each centre draws from, not stricter or softer examiners. A pass at a 31 percent centre and a pass at a 68 percent centre produce the identical full UK licence with identical legal status.

#Sources and further reading

The figures, fees, and procedures referenced in this article are verifiable on the official gov.uk pages below. PassRates.uk is built on the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s open data, published under the Open Government Licence.

• Driving test (gov.uk)
• Change or cancel your driving test (gov.uk)
• Theory test (gov.uk)
• Driving test and theory test data, cars (gov.uk)
• Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (gov.uk)
• Open Government Licence v3.0 (nationalarchives.gov.uk)