17-year-olds pass at 63.6%. 25-year-olds pass at 48.6%.
That 14.9-point spread is more than twice the 7.0 points separating the best DVSA region from the worst, and roughly 9 times the 1.7 points between male and female candidates nationally. Only the spread between individual test centres, 39.0 points from top to bottom, is wider. It comes from 1,143,629 tests taken by under-26s at 315 test centres in April 2025 to March 2026, and it is the difference between 1.57 expected attempts and 2.06.
- Age 17
- 63.6%
- Age 25
- 48.6%
- The gap
- 14.9 pts
- Worth in fees and lessons
- £155
301,662 tests
55,802 tests
0 of 187 centres reverse it
at £62 a test, £37 an hour
The cost of the curve
The same arithmetic every centre page here uses, applied to the national rate at each end of the range.
- Expected attempts at 171.57
- Expected attempts at 252.06
- Fees and retake lessons at 17£246
- Fees and retake lessons at 25£401
- Difference£155
Pass rates are DVSA’s. The pounds are ours: £62 a weekday test from the GOV.UK fee schedule and £37 an hour from our regional lesson table, seven retake hours per failed attempt. DVSA publishes no prices.
Pass rate falls fastest between 17 and 19, then flattens.
Aggregated from the age cells DVSA published at 315 test centres, which cover 97.87% of the under-26 tests in those centres’ own block totals. The missing 2.13% is the cells DVSA withholds, and it is left out rather than estimated.
Every published age, and what it costs.
| Age | Tests | Passes | Pass rate | Expected attempts | Fees and retake lessons |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | 301,662 | 191,744 | 63.56% | 1.57 | £246 |
| 18 | 241,255 | 133,314 | 55.26% | 1.81 | £322 |
| 19 | 136,987 | 71,323 | 52.07% | 1.92 | £357 |
| 20 | 97,965 | 50,313 | 51.36% | 1.95 | £366 |
| 21 | 83,221 | 42,985 | 51.65% | 1.94 | £362 |
| 22 | 77,211 | 40,470 | 52.41% | 1.91 | £353 |
| 23 | 67,278 | 34,578 | 51.40% | 1.95 | £366 |
| 24 | 57,865 | 28,695 | 49.59% | 2.02 | £388 |
| 25 | 55,802 | 27,126 | 48.61% | 2.06 | £401 |
| All ages | 1,998,261 | 999,794 | 50.03% | 2.00 | £383 |
Best age to sit the test on this record is 17 (£246 expected), worst is 25 (£401), a spread of £155. The all-ages row is DRT122A and includes every candidate, not just under-26s.
The age gap is widest in Scotland and narrowest in London.
Every region shows the same direction of travel; only the size changes. The cost column prices each region’s own age 17 and age 25 rates at that region’s own lesson rate, so it answers what the gap is worth locally rather than what the region costs in general.
| Region | Age 17 | Age 25 | Gap | Lesson rate | Gap in pounds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland | 63.7% | 45.6% | 18.1 pts | £34 | £187 |
| West Midlands | 62.0% | 44.1% | 17.9 pts | £34 | £196 |
| East of England | 64.1% | 48.2% | 15.9 pts | £36 | £162 |
| East Midlands | 65.2% | 49.5% | 15.7 pts | £34 | £146 |
| North West | 63.5% | 48.3% | 15.2 pts | £32 | £141 |
| North East | 62.5% | 48.0% | 14.5 pts | £29 | £129 |
| Wales | 65.4% | 51.2% | 14.2 pts | £32 | £122 |
| Yorkshire and The Humber | 63.8% | 49.6% | 14.2 pts | £32 | £128 |
| South West | 62.0% | 50.3% | 11.7 pts | £36 | £117 |
| South East | 64.6% | 53.0% | 11.6 pts | £38 | £110 |
| London | 61.0% | 49.9% | 11.1 pts | £43 | £133 |
Where 17-year-olds do best, and worst.
187 of the 307 centre pages here publish an age 17 cell that clears the 100-test floor; those are the only ones ranked. The all-ages column is the same centre’s headline rate, which is what most pass-rate tables show and why the two lists do not match.
Highest age 17 pass rate
| Centre | Age 17 | Tests | All ages |
|---|---|---|---|
| HawickScotland | 82.7% | 104 | 64.3% |
| DorchesterSouth West | 82.5% | 981 | 69.0% |
| PeeblesScotland | 81.4% | 156 | 58.8% |
| MontroseScotland | 80.3% | 193 | 70.0% |
| CumnockScotland | 79.6% | 167 | 67.4% |
| KelsoScotland | 78.1% | 114 | 59.2% |
| ArbroathScotland | 77.7% | 170 | 67.4% |
| Walton LGVYorkshire and The Humber | 77.5% | 440 | 59.8% |
| Melton MowbrayEast Midlands | 77.5% | 550 | 69.7% |
| BalaWales | 77.3% | 189 | 61.6% |
| PwllheliWales | 76.7% | 257 | 68.1% |
| Lee On The SolentSouth East | 76.5% | 1,701 | 63.2% |
Lowest age 17 pass rate
| Centre | Age 17 | Tests | All ages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barking (Tanner Street)London | 45.4% | 163 | 36.3% |
| PenzanceSouth West | 48.5% | 130 | 46.5% |
| WednesburyWest Midlands | 48.7% | 415 | 35.0% |
| Norris Green (Liverpool)North West | 48.7% | 819 | 37.9% |
| CamborneSouth West | 49.4% | 1,618 | 40.6% |
| Greenford (Horsenden Lane)London | 49.6% | 280 | 41.4% |
| Dunfermline (Vine)Scotland | 50.0% | 1,222 | 36.4% |
| WolverhamptonWest Midlands | 50.6% | 700 | 34.3% |
| ElginScotland | 50.7% | 868 | 42.3% |
| Chingford (London)London | 50.8% | 735 | 39.9% |
| Leicester (Cannock Street)East Midlands | 51.0% | 900 | 40.2% |
| GatesheadNorth East | 51.1% | 1,184 | 37.5% |
Widest age gap
Shrewsbury in West Midlands: 65.7% at 17 against 40.0% at 25, a 25.7-point spread. On West Midlands lesson rates that is £293 of expected fees and retake lessons between the two ends of the 8-year range.
Narrowest age gap
Barking (Tanner Street) in London: 45.4% at 17 and 44.8% at 25, 0.6 points apart. Even at the flattest centre in the country the younger candidates are ahead; not one of the ranked centres reverses the order.
What the age column does and does not tell you.
It is a description, not a cause. DVSA records the candidate’s age and the result. It records nothing about lesson history, hours, instructor or how long ago the last lesson was. The most plausible reading of a 14.9-point gap is course continuity: a 17-year-old is usually mid-course with weekly lessons behind them, while a first-timer at 25 more often books after a gap. That reading is ours, and it is a reading rather than a finding.
Volume falls faster than the pass rate. 301,662 tests were taken at 17 and 55,802 at 25, so the older end of the curve rests on about 18% of the evidence. That is why the centre pages need a floor before they will compare the two.
Small cells are withheld, and stay withheld. Of the 2,900 age cells in this table, 522 have their counts replaced with “..” by DVSA where publishing them could identify candidates. In 385 of those the agency still prints the pass rate. Those rates appear on the relevant centre pages exactly as published and are used for nothing else: they are never aggregated into the curve above, never ranked and never priced. No withheld cell is reconstructed by subtracting the visible rows from a block total.
A centre-level age comparison needs a base. A centre page here states its own age 17 against age 25 only when both cells were published with their counts and both clear 100 tests, the figure DVSA’s own caution note uses. That is 187 of 307 pages; the other 120 show what was published and abstain from the comparison, falling back to their region’s curve and saying so.
These are the newest centre-level figures that exist. The age table covers April 2025 to March 2026 and was published on 25 June 2026. DVSA updates it once a year, so the next refresh is June 2027. National totals run further forward and are on the directory hub.
What you can act on. Age on test day is not a lever. The things underneath it are: continuous tuition rather than a stop-start course, sitting the test while lessons are still running, and choosing a centre whose published rate for your circumstances is not the one dragging the average down. The cost of getting that wrong is on the retake page, and the full bill is on total cost.
Where next
Source and provenance
Pass rates, test volumes, gender splits and waiting times on this page are published statistics from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), taken from Driving test and theory test data: cars, tables DRT122A (Car driving test pass rates by gender and month: test centres, updated 2026-06-25) and DRT122D (Car driving test pass rates by age (17 to 25 year olds), year and test centre, updated 2026-06-25). Centre-level figures cover the April 2025 to March 2026 financial year; the national quarterly series runs to June 2026. Snapshot taken 2026-09-04.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Cost figures are drivingtestcost.com’s own, from the GOV.UK fee schedule and our regional lesson survey; DVSA publishes no prices and none of the money on this page comes from DVSA.
drivingtestcost.com is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to the DVSA, the DVA or GOV.UK. Pass rates are DVSA published statistics reproduced under the Open Government Licence, not our assessment of any centre. Great Britain only; Northern Ireland tests are run separately by the DVA. DVSA cautions that centre figures below about 100 tests a year are not robust for comparison.
Every age figure on this page comes from DRT122D and nothing else. The national curve is aggregated from the age cells DVSA published at 315 test centres, covering 97.87% of those centres’ own published under-26 totals; the remainder is withheld cells, left out rather than estimated. 522 cells are withheld in total. Centre-level figures cover April 2025 to March 2026 and are updated once a year.