Isle of Skye (Portree) test centre: 57.0% pass rate, £288 to get through it.
DVSA conducted 128 car practical tests here between April 2025 and March 2026, and 73 candidates passed. On the expected-attempts arithmetic that is 1.75 attempts, £109 in DVSA fees and £179 of retake lessons before a licence.
- Pass rate
- 57.0%
- Tests conducted
- 128
- National rank
- 77
- Median wait
- 8.3 wk
+7.0 pts vs national
73 passes
of 308 ranked centres
July 2026
What passing at Isle of Skye (Portree) costs
Expected cost of the test cycle for the average candidate at a 57.0% centre.
- Expected attempts (1 ÷ pass rate)1.75
- DVSA fees at £62 weekday£109
- Retake lessons (0.75 × 7 hr × £34)£179
- Test cycle at this centre£288
- Against a national-average centre-£74
- Extra queue time from retakes6.3 wk
Add the parts that do not change with the centre and the full bill from provisional to licence at Scotland lesson rates is about £1,875: £34 provisional, £23 theory, 45 hours of tuition at £34 (£1,530) and the test cycle above. Full cost stack.
What 57.0% at Isle of Skye (Portree) actually means for your budget.
Isle of Skye (Portree) is a very small centre by DVSA standards: 128 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 73 were passes, giving 57.0%. 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 77th of 308 nationally and 35th of 67 in Scotland.
That is 7.0 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 7.7 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 57.0% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.75 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Isle of Skye (Portree) pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.75 times, or £109. Add 0.75 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £179. The test cycle at Isle of Skye (Portree) is therefore about £288. Testing here therefore saves about £74 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.
Waiting time at Isle of Skye (Portree) ran to a median 8.3 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 3.6 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.75 expected retakes that is roughly 6.3 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 27 standard slots inside the booking window here and 0.0% of them were still free to book.
First attempts track the headline closely: 38 passes from 66 first tests at Isle of Skye (Portree), 57.6% against 57.0% for all attempts. 2 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 3.03% of them.
Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Isle of Skye (Portree) has fallen by 11.1 points, from 68.1% to 57.0%. Test volume has shrunk over the same span, from 160 to 128 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £86 to the average candidate.
Male candidates passed at 65.2% and female candidates at 48.4%, a gap of 16.8 points across 66 and 62 tests.
Among centres of a similar size in Scotland, Inveraray runs 12.3 points higher at 69.3%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £93 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.
Isle of Skye (Portree) vs its region and the country.
- Rank in Scotland
- 35 of 67
- First-attempt rate
- 57.6%
- Zero-fault first passes
- 2
- Automatic pass rate
- n/a
- Male candidates
- 65.2%
- Female candidates
- 48.4%
+7.7 pts vs region
66 first tests
3.03% of first attempts
not published
66 tests
62 tests
Down 11.1 points since 2021/22.
Dashed line: the 50.03% national pass rate for 2025/26.
Weeks between booking and taking the test, DVSA table DRT122F. Latest reading 8.3 weeks, 3.6 below the 11.9-week median across all centres.
DVSA withholds the age 25 cell at Isle of Skye (Portree), so there is nothing to compare it with.
Isle of Skye (Portree) conducted 128 tests across all ages, but split into single years the age 25 cell is one DVSA withholds, so there is no published figure to compare and this page does not invent one. 1 of the 9 age rows carry counts; the rest are marked withheld in the table below.
Across Scotland as a whole the same two ages are 63.7% and 45.6%, which on this page's arithmetic is £233 against £420 in fees and retake lessons at the £34 Scotland rate. That is regional context for Isle of Skye (Portree), not a figure for Isle of Skye (Portree), and it is offered as exactly that.
DVSA withheld the counts for ages 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 at Isle of Skye (Portree), which it does where a cell is small enough that publishing the numbers could identify candidates. For ages 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24 and 25 the agency still printed a pass rate; those rates appear in the table below exactly as published, and are used for nothing else on this page, because a percentage with no denominator cannot carry a cost estimate.
- Age 17 here
- 64.1%
- Age 25 here
- n/a
- Age gap
- abstains
- Age 17 vs country
- abstains
39 tests
counts withheld
national gap +14.9 pts
63.6% nationally
Pass rate by age, Scotland
This centre's own cells are mostly withheld, so the curve shown is the Scotland aggregate from the same table.
What each age costs at Isle of Skye (Portree), on the same arithmetic as the rest of this page.
Expected attempts is 1 ÷ the pass rate for that age, fees are £62 an attempt and retake lessons are 7 hours at the Scotland rate of £34. Ages where DVSA withheld the counts are shown as withheld and are not priced: a rate the agency would not put a denominator against is not a rate to budget from.
| Age | Tests conducted | Passes | Pass rate | Expected attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 | 39 | 25 | 64.1% | not priced | not priced |
| 18 | withheld | withheld | 83.3% | not priced | not priced |
| 19 | withheld | withheld | 57.1% | not priced | not priced |
| 20 | withheld | withheld | 62.5% | not priced | not priced |
| 21 | withheld | withheld | not published | not priced | not priced |
| 22 | withheld | withheld | 50.0% | not priced | not priced |
| 23 | withheld | withheld | 50.0% | not priced | not priced |
| 24 | withheld | withheld | 60.0% | not priced | not priced |
| 25 | withheld | withheld | 25.0% | not priced | not priced |
| Under 26 | 88 | 54 | 61.4% | 1.63 | £251 |
| All ages | 128 | 73 | 57.0% | 1.75 | £288 |
The under-26 row is DVSA’s own block total from DRT122D and counts the withheld cells, so it will exceed the sum of the ages printed above it wherever a cell is withheld (here: ages 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25). The all-ages row is DRT122A, the figure the rest of this page uses. Nothing on this table is estimated or back-filled.
Read it at the level that holds up
Of the 9 age rows DVSA publishes for Isle of Skye (Portree), 1 carry counts and 0 clear the 100-test floor, which is why the age 17 against age 25 comparison and its cost consequence are left blank above rather than filled with a number that would not survive a second look. Pooled across all 74 Scotland centres the same cells are large enough to read, and the national age curve rests on 301,662 tests at age 17 alone.
Every published financial year at Isle of Skye (Portree).
| Financial year | Conducted | Passed | Pass rate | Expected attempts | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 | 128 | 73 | 57.0% | 1.75 | £288 |
| 2024/25 | 133 | 93 | 69.9% | 1.43 | £191 |
| 2023/24 | 126 | 82 | 65.1% | 1.54 | £223 |
| 2022/23 | 110 | 74 | 67.3% | 1.49 | £208 |
| 2021/22 | 160 | 109 | 68.1% | 1.47 | £202 |
| 2019/20 | 135 | 95 | 70.4% | 1.42 | £188 |
| 2018/19 | 144 | 94 | 65.3% | 1.53 | £222 |
| 2017/18 | 158 | 108 | 68.3% | 1.46 | £201 |
| 2016/17 | 117 | 76 | 65.0% | 1.54 | £224 |
| 2015/16 | 115 | 89 | 77.4% | 1.29 | £150 |
Cost columns apply today’s £62 fee and the current £34 lesson rate to each year’s pass rate, so the column isolates what the pass rate does to the bill. The fee itself has moved over time; see fee history.
The five Scotland centres closest in size to Isle of Skye (Portree).
Matched on annual test volume rather than distance, because a centre doing 128 tests a year faces a comparable road and traffic mix. Cost column uses the Scotland lesson rate of £34 throughout, so the only variable is the pass rate.
| Centre | Pass rate | Tests | Median wait | Test cycle cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Isle of Skye (Portree) (this centre) | 57.0% | 128 | 8.3 wk | £288 |
| Rothesay | 52.0% | 125 | 23.6 wk | £339 |
| Inveraray | 69.3% | 124 | 20.9 wk | £195 |
| Kyle of Lochalsh | 57.4% | 136 | 14.1 wk | £285 |
| Grantown-On-Spey | 56.9% | 137 | 21.6 wk | £289 |
| Lochgilphead | 56.4% | 140 | 14.3 wk | £294 |
Higher pass rate in Scotland
- Dundee57.3%
- Kyle of Lochalsh57.4%
- Ayr57.5%
- Banff57.5%
Lower pass rate in Scotland
- Grantown-On-Spey56.9%
- Lochgilphead56.4%
- Orkney55.9%
- Irvine55.7%
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), DRT122C (Car driving test pass rates by first driving attempt and gender, including zero faults: test centres, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122D (Car driving test pass rates by age (17 to 25 year olds), year and test centre, updated 2026-06-25), DRT122E (Automatic car driving test pass rates by gender: test centres, updated 2026-06-25) and DRT122F (Car driving test waiting times and availability by driving test centre, updated 2026-08-12). 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.
Age figures are single years of age from DRT122D and are reproduced exactly as published, withheld cells included. DVSA replaces the counts in small age cells with “..”, in most cases while still printing that cell’s pass rate; those cells are shown here as withheld and are excluded from every comparison, ranking and cost figure on this page. Nothing withheld is reconstructed from the block total. Isle of Skye (Portree) does not have enough published age volume for a centre-level comparison, so the age curve shown is the Scotland aggregate.