Galashiels test centre: 47.4% pass rate, £395 to get through it.

Galashiels is a small centre by DVSA standards: 2,241 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 1,063 were passes, giving 47.4%. At that volume a run of two or three unusual weeks moves the annual figure visibly, so treat the number as a guide to the roads rather than a precise ranking. It sits 231st of 308 nationally and 57th of 67 in Scotland.

That lands within 2.6 percentage points of the 50.03% national figure and 1.9 points below the 49.3% Scotland average, which makes Galashiels an ordinary centre on the DVSA table and puts the cost question back on preparation rather than location.

Turn 47.4% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 2.11 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Galashiels pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 2.11 times, or £131. Add 1.11 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £264. The test cycle at Galashiels is therefore about £395. Testing here therefore costs about £33 more than the same candidate would spend at a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, purely because of the extra attempt the pass rate implies.

Waiting time at Galashiels ran to a median 7.4 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 4.5 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 1.11 expected retakes that is roughly 8.2 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 709 standard slots inside the booking window here and 5.1% of them were still free to book.

First-timers do better than the headline suggests. Of 1,032 first attempts at Galashiels, 523 passed, a rate of 50.7%, which is 3.3 points above the all-attempts figure. 20 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 1.94% of them. The gap says the candidates arriving well prepared are getting through, and the all-attempts rate is being pulled down by repeat attempts.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Galashiels has fallen by 20.5 points, from 67.9% to 47.4%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 904 to 2,241 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £191 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 45.0% and female candidates at 53.1%, a gap of 8.1 points across 1,561 and 680 tests. Automatic tests made up 30.0% of the workload and passed at 41.2%, 6.3 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 36.4% in August 2025 to 53.4% in April 2025, a 17.0-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in Scotland, Dumfries runs 6.5 points higher at 54.0%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £76 of expected difference. Before moving, price the switch: a new instructor or extra travel for route familiarity typically costs £60 to £120 plus two settling-in lessons, which eats most of a gap under about eight points.