Oswestry test centre: 52.4% pass rate, £335 to get through it.

Oswestry is a small centre by DVSA standards: 1,851 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 969 were passes, giving 52.4%. 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 146th of 308 nationally and 8th of 26 in West Midlands.

That lands within 2.3 percentage points of the 50.03% national figure and 6.2 points above the 46.2% West Midlands average, which makes Oswestry an ordinary centre on the DVSA table and puts the cost question back on preparation rather than location.

Turn 52.4% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.91 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Oswestry pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.91 times, or £118. Add 0.91 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the West Midlands rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £217. The test cycle at Oswestry is therefore about £335. Testing here therefore saves about £27 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

Waiting time at Oswestry ran to a median 11.4 weeks between booking and test in July 2026, 0.5 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.91 expected retakes that is roughly 10.4 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 529 standard slots inside the booking window here and 14.7% of them were still free to book.

First-timers do better than the headline suggests. Of 936 first attempts at Oswestry, 508 passed, a rate of 54.3%, which is 1.9 points above the all-attempts figure. 35 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 3.74% 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 Oswestry has fallen by 1.9 points, from 54.2% to 52.4%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 1,449 to 1,851 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £20 to the average candidate.

Male and female candidates are within a point of each other at Oswestry, 52.5% against 52.1%. Automatic tests made up 15.2% of the workload and passed at 39.0%, 13.3 points below the manual-inclusive rate, worth knowing before paying the automatic lesson premium. Month to month the rate ran from 47.0% in January 2026 to 60.3% in April 2025, a 13.3-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in West Midlands, Hereford runs 6.4 points higher at 58.8%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £63 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.