UK Driving Test Pass Rate Statistics for 2026

The UK driving test pass rate for 2024-25 is 48.65 percent volume-weighted from the DVSA DRT122A per-centre dataset under Open Government Licence v3.0; the DRT121C published total works out to 48.67 percent across 1,839,753 conducted tests. The figure covers all Category B (car) practical tests across active GB centres. The 48.65 percent national figure sits near the top of the historical 43.87 to 48.82 percent band that has held over the 18-year per-centre series.

Approximately 1.84 million UK Category B (car) practical driving tests were conducted in 2024-25 according to DVSA DRT121C, which publishes the headline total of 1,839,753 conducted and 895,342 passed. The annual volume has been in the 1.5 to 1.95 million range across the post-pandemic recovery. Theory tests run at approximately 1.5 million per year. The combined practical and theory volume of roughly 3.3 million annual sittings makes the UK driving test one of the highest-volume standardised assessments in government services. See /research/test-volume-trends.

The UK average wait time for a practical driving test slot is 14.9 weeks as of the DVSA bulletin published May 2026. The range across centres is 4 weeks (rural and island centres with surplus capacity) to 22 weeks (inner-London and high-demand suburban centres). The average has fallen from a 2022 post-pandemic peak of roughly 22 weeks but remains elevated versus the pre-pandemic baseline of 7 to 9 weeks. See /tools/wait-time-finder for live centre-level wait times.

The 2024-25 rankable-centre pass rate spread is 33.3 percentage points: 33.4 percent at Wolverhampton (lowest with at least 1,000 tests in the year) to 66.7 percent at Dorchester (highest with at least 1,000 tests). The full distribution shows the bottom decile averaging in the high 30s and the top decile in the low 60s. The structural cluster analysis at /research/centre-difficulty-clustering groups centres into difficulty tiers from inner-city pressure through urban-dense, suburban-mix, provincial, to rural-easy. Centre choice is the single largest variance lever in individual candidate outcomes.

Male candidates pass at 49.50 percent on the volume-weighted GB national average in 2024-25; female candidates pass at 47.61 percent; the gender pass gap is 1.90 percentage points and has narrowed sharply from 4.90 points in 2020-21. The gap is small on the national average but widens at certain centres and ages. The proposed explanations include differences in preparation hours, instructor access patterns, and selection effects in who books at what preparation stage. See /research/gender-gap-driving-test for the regional and per-centre breakdown.

17 year olds pass at 60.75 percent on average in 2024-25; candidates 18-24 pass at 50.77 percent; candidates 25 to 34 pass at 45.12 percent; candidates 35-44 pass at 40.08 percent; candidates 45+ pass at 36.44 percent. The age pass gap between 17 year olds and the 25-34 cohort is 15.6 percentage points; the full gap from 17 year olds to the over-45s is around 24 percentage points, the largest single demographic gap in the dataset. The proposed explanations include exposure to driving environments before the test (private practice during the L-plate period), skill-acquisition rate differences, and lower private practice hours among older candidates with less family-car access. See /research/pass-rate-by-age.

The weighted average UK candidate passes in roughly 2.0 attempts based on DVSA DRT121D 2024-25 attempt-distribution data. Of all 2024-25 passes: 49.2 percent were at attempt 1 (440,408 passes), 25.0 percent at attempt 2 (223,855), 12.4 percent at attempt 3 (111,480), 6.2 percent at attempt 4 (55,962), 3.2 percent at attempt 5 (28,902), and 3.9 percent at attempt 6 or more (34,761). The pass rate by attempt number shows a gentle drift: 48.92 percent at attempt 1, 49.51 percent attempt 2, 49.06 percent attempt 3, 48.00 percent attempt 4, 46.76 percent attempt 5, dropping more sharply to 42.51 percent at attempt 6 or more. See /research/retake-patterns.

For centre-level live pass rates, use /tools/pass-rate-finder with your postcode to see the 6 to 10 nearest centres ranked. For the pure ranking, see /rankings/easiest and /rankings/hardest. For the cluster-grouped centre analysis, see /research/centre-difficulty-clustering. For pass rate by postcode area, see the UK driving test pass rate by postcode guide. For the London-versus-UK comparison, see the driving test pass rate London vs UK guide. All data sourced from DVSA DRT122A 2024-25 under Open Government Licence v3.0.