Rothesay test centre: 52.0% pass rate, £339 to get through it.

Rothesay is a very small centre by DVSA standards: 125 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 65 were passes, giving 52.0%. 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 151st of 308 nationally and 46th of 67 in Scotland.

That lands within 2.0 percentage points of the 50.03% national figure and 2.7 points above the 49.3% Scotland average, which makes Rothesay an ordinary centre on the DVSA table and puts the cost question back on preparation rather than location.

Turn 52.0% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.92 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Rothesay pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.92 times, or £119. Add 0.92 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £220. The test cycle at Rothesay is therefore about £339. Testing here therefore saves about £23 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

The queue is the expensive part at Rothesay. DVSA recorded a median wait of 23.6 weeks between booking and taking a test in July 2026, 11.7 weeks longer than the 11.9-week median across all centres. Multiply that by the 0.92 expected retakes and a candidate here is looking at roughly 21.8 extra weeks of waiting, close to 5 months of insurance, lesson top-ups and a licence still not in the post. In the same month DVSA offered 55 standard slots inside the booking window here and 0.0% of them were still free to book.

First attempts track the headline closely: 39 passes from 74 first tests at Rothesay, 52.7% against 52.0% for all attempts. 0 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 0.00% of them.

Since 2021/22 the pass rate at Rothesay has fallen by 18.5 points, from 70.5% to 52.0%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 95 to 125 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £152 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 53.0% and female candidates at 50.9%, a gap of 2.2 points across 66 and 59 tests. Automatic tests accounted for 26.4% of the 125 tests and passed at 51.5%, close enough to the overall rate that gearbox choice is a comfort decision here, not a pass-rate one.

Among centres of a similar size in Scotland, Inveraray runs 17.3 points higher at 69.3%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £144 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.