Thurso test centre: 63.0% pass rate, £238 to get through it.

Thurso is a very small centre by DVSA standards: 162 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 102 were passes, giving 63.0%. 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 32nd of 308 nationally and 22nd of 67 in Scotland.

That is 12.9 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 13.6 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 63.0% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.59 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Thurso pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.59 times, or £98. Add 0.59 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £140. The test cycle at Thurso is therefore about £238. Testing here therefore saves about £124 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

A fail at Thurso costs time as well as money. The median wait between booking and testing was 15.1 weeks in June 2026, 3.2 weeks above the 11.9-week national median. At 0.59 expected retakes that is about 8.9 weeks of additional queueing, and most learners keep paying for an hour or two a month through it. In the same month DVSA offered 13 standard slots inside the booking window here and 0.0% of them were still free to book.

First-timers do better than the headline suggests. Of 101 first attempts at Thurso, 65 passed, a rate of 64.4%, which is 1.4 points above the all-attempts figure. 13 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 12.87% 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 Thurso has risen by 5.4 points, from 57.6% to 63.0%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 125 to 162 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £44 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 69.7% and female candidates at 57.0%, a gap of 12.8 points across 76 and 86 tests.

Among centres of a similar size in Scotland, Duns runs 7.2 points higher at 70.2%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £49 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.