Stirling test centre: 43.0% pass rate, £459 to get through it.

Stirling is a small centre by DVSA standards: 2,747 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 1,182 were passes, giving 43.0%. 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 276th of 308 nationally and 61st of 67 in Scotland.

That is 7.0 percentage points below the 50.03% national figure, and 6.3 points below the 49.3% average for Scotland. Low pass rates cluster where test routes carry heavy traffic, multi-lane junctions and frequent bus lanes. The examiners are not stricter; the roads give a candidate more chances to make a serious fault.

Turn 43.0% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 2.32 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Stirling pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 2.32 times, or £144. Add 1.32 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £315. The test cycle at Stirling is therefore about £459. Testing here therefore costs about £97 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.

A fail at Stirling costs time as well as money. The median wait between booking and testing was 12.5 weeks in July 2026, 0.6 weeks above the 11.9-week national median. At 1.32 expected retakes that is about 16.5 weeks of additional queueing, and most learners keep paying for an hour or two a month through it. In the same month DVSA offered 912 standard slots inside the booking window here and 4.0% of them were still free to book.

First-timers do better than the headline suggests. Of 1,414 first attempts at Stirling, 626 passed, a rate of 44.3%, which is 1.2 points above the all-attempts figure. 34 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 2.40% 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 Stirling has fallen by 7.5 points, from 50.5% to 43.0%. Test volume has shrunk over the same span, from 4,418 to 2,747 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £103 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 43.6% and female candidates at 42.5%, a gap of 1.2 points across 1,336 and 1,411 tests. Automatic tests made up 13.3% of the workload and passed at 33.7%, 9.3 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 35.7% in October 2025 to 48.9% in April 2025, a 13.2-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in Scotland, Perth (Arran Road) runs 5.8 points higher at 48.8%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £83 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.