Wick test centre: 59.4% pass rate, £267 to get through it.

Wick is a very small centre by DVSA standards: 239 car practical tests in 2025/26, of which 142 were passes, giving 59.4%. 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 49th of 308 nationally and 25th of 67 in Scotland.

That is 9.4 percentage points above the 50.03% recorded across all 317 centres, and 10.1 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 59.4% into money. One divided by the pass rate gives 1.68 expected attempts before a first pass, so the average candidate at Wick pays the £62 weekday DVSA fee about 1.68 times, or £104. Add 0.68 expected retakes at 7 hours of extra tuition each, charged at the Scotland rate of £34 an hour, and the extra lessons come to £163. The test cycle at Wick is therefore about £267. Testing here therefore saves about £95 against a centre sitting on the 50.03% national average, because the higher pass rate buys back part of an attempt.

Waiting time at Wick ran to a median 11.4 weeks between booking and test in June 2026, 0.5 weeks below the 11.9-week national median. Across 0.68 expected retakes that is roughly 7.8 weeks of extra queueing before a licence arrives. In the same month DVSA offered 19 standard slots inside the booking window here and 15.8% of them were still free to book.

First-timers do better than the headline suggests. Of 131 first attempts at Wick, 81 passed, a rate of 61.8%, which is 2.4 points above the all-attempts figure. 7 of those first tests were passed with no driving faults recorded at all, 5.34% 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 Wick has risen by 5.7 points, from 53.8% to 59.4%. Test volume has grown over the same span, from 186 to 239 tests a year. On the cost model above, that shift alone is worth about £53 to the average candidate.

Male candidates passed at 66.1% and female candidates at 52.2%, a gap of 14.0 points across 124 and 115 tests. Month to month the rate ran from 60.7% in June 2025 to 78.6% in September 2025, a 17.9-point swing that shows how little a single month proves.

Among centres of a similar size in Scotland, Girvan runs 12.6 points higher at 72.0%. On the same arithmetic that is roughly £88 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.