Newton Stewart test centre: 65.8% pass rate, £218 to get through it.

Newton Stewart is a very small centre by DVSA standards: 225 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 148 were passes, giving 65.8%. 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 20th of 308 nationally and 16th of 67 in Scotland.

That is 15.8 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 16.4 points above the 49.3% Scotland average. A centre in this band is usually working quieter road layouts with fewer forced lane decisions, not a softer marking standard: the DVSA marking sheet is national.

Turn 65.8% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.52 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Newton Stewart pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.52 times, or £94. Add 0.52 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £124. The test cycle at Newton Stewart is therefore about £218. Testing here therefore saves about £144 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

The queue is the expensive part at Newton Stewart. DVSA recorded a median wait of 19.6 weeks between booking and taking a test in July 2026, 7.7 weeks longer than the 11.9-week median across all centres. Multiply that by the 0.52 expected retakes and a candidate here is looking at roughly 10.2 extra weeks of waiting, close to 2 months of insurance, lesson top-ups and a licence still not in the post. In the same month DVSA offered 86 standard slots inside the booking window here and 10.5% of them were still free to book.

The first-attempt picture is harder here than the headline. 139 candidates sat their first test at Newton Stewart and 89 passed, 64.0%, which is 1.8 points below the all-attempts rate. 6 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 4.32% of them. Budget for the second booking from the start rather than treating it as the exception.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Newton Stewart has risen by 3.4 points, from 62.4% to 65.8%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 178 to 225 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £25 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 70.4% and female candidates at 61.5%, a gap of 8.8 points across 108 and 117 tests. Month to month the rate ran from 60.0% in November 2025 to 80.0% in August 2025, a 20.0-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in Scotland, Stranraer runs 5.4 points higher at 71.2%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £34 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.