Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) test centre: 55.1% pass rate, £295 to get through it.

Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) is a small centre by DVSA standards: 1,529 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 843 were passes, giving 55.1%. 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 107th of 308 nationally and 9th of 21 in Wales.

That is 5.1 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 2.8 points above the 52.4% Wales 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 55.1% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.81 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.81 times, or £112. Add 0.81 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Wales rate of £32 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £182. The test cycle at Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) is therefore about £295. Testing here therefore saves about £53 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

Waiting time at Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) ran to a median 10.6 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 1.3 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.81 expected retakes that is roughly 8.6 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 435 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. 760 candidates sat their first test at Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) and 396 passed, 52.1%, which is 3.0 points below the all-attempts rate. 9 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 1.18% of them. Budget for the second booking from the start rather than treating it as the exception.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) has fallen by 7.9 points, from 63.0% to 55.1%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 1,263 to 1,529 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £65 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 56.2% and female candidates at 53.8%, a gap of 2.4 points across 858 and 671 tests. Automatic tests made up 15.2% of the workload and passed at 61.2%, 6.1 points above the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 50.0% in May 2025 to 61.4% in February 2026, a 11.4-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

None of the similarly sized centres in Wales runs more than five points ahead of Aberystwyth (Park Avenue) on pass rate, so travelling elsewhere is unlikely to pay for itself once you add an unfamiliar route, the travel and the settling-in lessons. The cheaper lever here is preparation on the roads your instructor already knows.