Perth (Arran Road) test centre: 48.8% pass rate, £376 to get through it.

Perth (Arran Road) is a small centre by DVSA standards: 2,642 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 1,290 were passes, giving 48.8%. 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 212th of 308 nationally and 53rd of 67 in Scotland.

That lands within 1.2 percentage points of the 50.03% national figure and 0.5 points below the 49.3% Scotland average, which makes Perth (Arran Road) an ordinary centre on the DVSA table and puts the cost question back on preparation rather than location.

Turn 48.8% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 2.05 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Perth (Arran Road) pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 2.05 times, or £127. Add 1.05 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £249. The test cycle at Perth (Arran Road) is therefore about £376. That is within £14 of what the same cycle costs at a centre on the national average, so Perth (Arran Road) is close to cost-neutral as a choice.

A fail at Perth (Arran Road) costs time as well as money. The median wait between booking and testing was 12.9 weeks in July 2026, 1.0 weeks above the 11.9-week national median. At 1.05 expected retakes that is about 13.5 weeks of additional queueing, and most learners keep paying for an hour or two a month through it. In the same month DVSA offered 845 standard slots inside the booking window here and 4.4% of them were still free to book.

The first-attempt picture is harder here than the headline. 1,395 candidates sat their first test at Perth (Arran Road) and 658 passed, 47.2%, which is 1.7 points below the all-attempts rate. 35 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 2.51% of them. Budget for the second booking from the start rather than treating it as the exception.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Perth (Arran Road) has fallen by 10.8 points, from 59.7% to 48.8%. Volume has been steady, 2,444 tests then against 2,642 now. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £112 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 53.7% and female candidates at 43.8%, a gap of 9.9 points across 1,351 and 1,291 tests. Automatic tests made up 18.6% of the workload and passed at 38.5%, 10.3 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 44.0% in January 2026 to 55.0% in June 2025, a 11.0-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in Scotland, Livingston runs 6.9 points higher at 55.7%. 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.