Derby Theory Test Centre: 44.71% pass rate
DVSA recorded 35,069 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 15,680 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £51.44 of test fees.
Of the 35,069 car theory tests sat at Derby in the year to March 2026, 15,680 ended in a pass and 19,389 in a fail. 44.71% is 0.13 points below the 44.84% national figure. That is the 102nd highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 9th of 13 in the East Midlands. Derby is one of the busiest theory test centres in Great Britain, handling about 2,922 sittings in an average month.
The theory test fee is £23 at every centre in Great Britain, so what changes from place to place is not the price of one sitting but how many sittings a licence takes. Every theory pass here takes 2.24 sittings on average, so £51.44 of DVSA fees, within pennies of the £51.29 national figure. The 19,389 fails at Derby last year came to £446k in fees paid for tests that had to be taken again, out of £807k taken at this centre in total.
The recorded gender split separates the two groups at Derby: 46.00% for the 15,995 tests sat by women and 43.64% for the 19,074 sat by men, against a national gap of 4.20 points. That works out at roughly £2.70 of fee difference per licence.
Across the twelve published months the rate ranged from 43.7% in June 2025 to 47.3% in August 2025, with the heaviest month being July 2025 at 3,250 sittings. Nothing about the test changes between months, so the spread reflects who happened to book.
The direction of travel matters more than any single year. Derby rose 0.46 points from 2024/25, and across the 19 years DVSA publishes for this centre the rate has moved from 63.39% in 2007/08 to 44.71% now. Applying today's £23 fee to both, the expected cost of a pass has gone from £36.28 to £51.44.
Derby sits 14 miles from Nottingham, its closest neighbour, which recorded 46.64%. That is the highest of the five nearest centres, a difference worth £2.13 per pass on paper, and it is still not worth the journey. Travelling changes nothing you can bank: every centre runs the same question bank and the same 43-out-of-50 pass mark, and DVSA charges the same £23 wherever you sit it.
What does change the bill is preparation. One retake costs £23, which is 5 times the £4.99 price of the official DVSA revision app and more than the £15 print book. On the April 2025 to March 2026 figures for Derby, the average candidate here needs 2.24 sittings, so budgeting for one attempt and nothing else is optimistic. Set against the wider learner bill, with lessons at about £33 an hour on this site's Midlands band, the closest published row to East Midlands, the theory fee is 3.5% of the £1,470 minimum.
Across the East Midlands as a whole, DVSA recorded 223,311 car theory tests at 14 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 43.87% and £52.42 of fees per pass. Derby is above that regional figure by 0.84 points.
Derby at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 35,069
- Passes
- 15,680
- Pass rate
- 44.71%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 102 of 165
- Rank in East Midlands
- 9 of 13
- Male pass rate19,074 tests
- 43.64%
- Female pass rate15,995 tests
- 46.00%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +2.36 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (44.25%)
- +0.46 pts
- Years published
- 19
- Region
- East Midlands
- County or unitary
- City of Derby
- Nearest other centre
- Nottingham, 14 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Derby
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Derby's own published pass rate. It describes what theory testing costs the candidates who book here on average. It is not a prediction for one person, and it is not a reason to travel: the question bank and the pass mark are national.
| Measure | Derby | East Midlands | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 44.71% | 43.87% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 2.24 | 2.28 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £51.44 | £52.42 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £28.44 | £29.42 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | +£0.15 | +£1.13 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £445,947 | £2.9m | £37.1m |
Sittings per pass is tests conducted divided by passes, so it counts everyone who sat at this centre, including repeat attempts. Fees per pass is that figure multiplied by the £23 DVSA fee. The fee is ours, from the fee page; the counts are DVSA's.
One retake buys nothing
A second sitting is another full £23. There is no retake discount. The official DVSA revision app is £4.99, so a retake costs about 5 times as much as the thing that would have prevented it.
Share of the learner bill
At Derby's rate the theory fee works out at 3.5% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £33 an hour on this site's Midlands band, the closest published row to East Midlands. See the full budget.
The two-year clock
A theory pass lasts 2 years. Miss that window before the practical and the £23 is due again. Retakes also need 3 clear working days between attempts, so a fail costs time as well as money.
Derby month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month August 2025 at 47.3%, weakest June 2025 at 43.7%, busiest July 2025 with 3,250 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 2,897 | 1,282 | 44.3% | £51.97 |
| May 25 | 2,869 | 1,264 | 44.1% | £52.20 |
| Jun 25 | 2,916 | 1,274 | 43.7% | £52.64 |
| Jul 25 | 3,250 | 1,443 | 44.4% | £51.80 |
| Aug 25 | 3,099 | 1,465 | 47.3% | £48.65 |
| Sep 25 | 3,150 | 1,397 | 44.4% | £51.86 |
| Oct 25 | 3,150 | 1,382 | 43.9% | £52.42 |
| Nov 25 | 2,777 | 1,245 | 44.8% | £51.30 |
| Dec 25 | 2,099 | 927 | 44.2% | £52.08 |
| Jan 26 | 2,898 | 1,310 | 45.2% | £50.88 |
| Feb 26 | 2,922 | 1,330 | 45.5% | £50.53 |
| Mar 26 | 3,042 | 1,361 | 44.7% | £51.41 |
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Derby. The fee is held constant on purpose, so the only thing moving the right-hand column is how often candidates passed.
| Year | Tests | Passes | Pass rate | Fees per pass at today's £23 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025/26 | 35,069 | 15,680 | 44.71% | £51.44 |
| 2024/25 | 33,637 | 14,883 | 44.25% | £51.98 |
| 2023/24 | 31,595 | 13,922 | 44.06% | £52.20 |
| 2022/23 | 28,712 | 12,580 | 43.81% | £52.49 |
| 2021/22 | 25,747 | 12,547 | 48.70% | £47.20 |
| 2020/21 | 9,971 | 5,322 | 53.37% | £43.09 |
| 2019/20 | 19,279 | 8,959 | 46.47% | £49.49 |
| 2018/19 | 18,457 | 8,477 | 45.93% | £50.08 |
| 2017/18 | 19,077 | 8,939 | 46.86% | £49.09 |
| 2016/17 | 20,987 | 10,160 | 48.41% | £47.51 |
| 2015/16 | 20,827 | 10,202 | 48.98% | £46.95 |
| 2014/15 | 16,913 | 8,758 | 51.78% | £44.42 |
| 2013/14 | 16,130 | 8,260 | 51.21% | £44.91 |
| 2012/13 | 12,416 | 7,398 | 59.58% | £38.60 |
| 2011/12 | 13,808 | 8,380 | 60.69% | £37.90 |
| 2010/11 | 12,759 | 8,012 | 62.79% | £36.63 |
| 2009/10 | 12,906 | 8,114 | 62.87% | £36.58 |
| 2008/09 | 12,599 | 8,079 | 64.12% | £35.87 |
| 2007/08 | 14,653 | 9,288 | 63.39% | £36.29 |
Theory test centres near Derby
The five closest centres by road-distance proxy. DVSA publishes no address for a theory test centre, so distances are measured town centre to town centre and are indicative. They are here for context, not as a shopping list: the fee and the test are identical at all of them.
| Centre | Distance | Tests | Pass rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nottingham | 14 mi | 42,273 | 46.64% | £49.31 |
| Chesterfield | 22 mi | 16,248 | 45.27% | £50.81 |
| Leicester | 25 mi | 61,224 | 40.41% | £56.92 |
| Sutton Coldfield | 29 mi | 23,976 | 42.57% | £54.03 |
| Stoke-on-Trent | 30 mi | 22,423 | 43.89% | £52.41 |
More centres on the the East Midlands page, which covers 14 centres and 223,311 tests, or in the full directory.
Where these figures come from
Test volumes, passes, pass rates and gender splits on this page are published statistics from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, taken from the GOV.UK statistical data set Driving test and theory test data: cars:
- DRT112A, Car theory test pass rates by gender and month: test centres. Updated 2026-07-17, covering April 2007 to March 2026.
- DRT111A, Car theory tests conducted, passed and pass rates by financial quarter and financial year: Great Britain. Updated 2026-09-03, covering April 2007 to June 2026.
Centre-level figures cover the April 2025 to March 2026 financial year, the most recent full year DVSA publishes at centre level. Snapshot taken 2026-09-05. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
DVSA publishes no region or address for theory test centres. Each centre is named after its town, and the town's country, region, county and centre point come from OS Open Names. Source: Ordnance Survey Open Names, via postcodes.io, Open Government Licence v3.0.
Every pound on this page is theorytestcost.com's own arithmetic on the £23 DVSA fee and the cost figures published elsewhere on this site. DVSA publishes no prices and none of the money here comes from DVSA.
theorytestcost.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: theory tests in Northern Ireland are run separately by the DVA. DVSA cautions that centre figures below about 100 tests a year are not robust for comparison, and withholds a centre's figures entirely where publishing them could identify an individual.