Dudley Theory Test Centre: 39.95% pass rate
DVSA recorded 28,272 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 11,296 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £57.57 of test fees.
Dudley is a high-volume centre, working through roughly 2,356 sittings a month. Across April 2025 to March 2026 it conducted 28,272 car theory tests and issued 11,296 passes, a pass rate of 39.95% against the national 44.84%. That is the 161st highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 11th of 11 in the West Midlands.
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. Each pass at Dudley takes 2.50 sittings on average, which is £57.57 of DVSA fees per licence, £6.28 more than the £51.29 national figure. The 16,976 fails at Dudley last year came to £390k in fees paid for tests that had to be taken again, out of £650k taken at this centre in total.
The recorded gender split separates the two groups at Dudley: 42.06% for the 13,318 tests sat by women and 38.08% for the 14,954 sat by men, against a national gap of 4.20 points. That works out at roughly £5.72 of fee difference per licence.
Month to month the rate moves about. March 2026 was the strongest month here at 41.8%, January 2026 the weakest at 37.4%, and July 2025 the busiest with 2,553 sittings. A swing of 4.4 points across one year is normal in a sample this size and is not a reason to time a booking.
The direction of travel matters more than any single year. Dudley rose 1.77 points from 2024/25, and across the 19 years DVSA publishes for this centre the rate has moved from 61.63% in 2007/08 to 39.95% now. Applying today's £23 fee to both, the expected cost of a pass has gone from £37.32 to £57.57.
Dudley sits 6 miles from Wolverhampton, its closest neighbour, which recorded 40.26%. Redditch, 15 miles out, is the strongest of the five nearest at 48.40%, a difference worth £10.05 per pass on paper, and 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 Dudley, the average candidate here needs 2.50 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 West Midlands, the theory fee is 3.9% of the £1,470 minimum.
Across the West Midlands as a whole, DVSA recorded 305,240 car theory tests at 11 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 42.89% and £53.63 of fees per pass. Dudley is below that regional figure by 2.94 points.
Dudley at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 28,272
- Passes
- 11,296
- Pass rate
- 39.95%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 161 of 165
- Rank in West Midlands
- 11 of 11
- Male pass rate14,954 tests
- 38.08%
- Female pass rate13,318 tests
- 42.06%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +3.98 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (38.18%)
- +1.77 pts
- Years published
- 19
- Region
- West Midlands
- County or unitary
- not recorded
- Nearest other centre
- Wolverhampton, 6 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Dudley
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Dudley'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 | Dudley | West Midlands | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 39.95% | 42.89% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 2.50 | 2.33 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £57.57 | £53.63 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £34.57 | £30.63 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | +£6.28 | +£2.34 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £390,448 | £4m | £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 Dudley's rate the theory fee works out at 3.9% 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 West 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.
Dudley month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month March 2026 at 41.8%, weakest January 2026 at 37.4%, busiest July 2025 with 2,553 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 2,377 | 943 | 39.7% | £57.98 |
| May 25 | 2,436 | 935 | 38.4% | £59.92 |
| Jun 25 | 2,513 | 995 | 39.6% | £58.09 |
| Jul 25 | 2,553 | 1,041 | 40.8% | £56.41 |
| Aug 25 | 2,522 | 991 | 39.3% | £58.53 |
| Sep 25 | 2,126 | 839 | 39.5% | £58.28 |
| Oct 25 | 2,537 | 1,026 | 40.4% | £56.87 |
| Nov 25 | 2,286 | 928 | 40.6% | £56.66 |
| Dec 25 | 2,324 | 914 | 39.3% | £58.48 |
| Jan 26 | 1,648 | 616 | 37.4% | £61.53 |
| Feb 26 | 2,401 | 1,002 | 41.7% | £55.11 |
| Mar 26 | 2,549 | 1,066 | 41.8% | £55.00 |
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Dudley. 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 | 28,272 | 11,296 | 39.95% | £57.57 |
| 2024/25 | 28,873 | 11,023 | 38.18% | £60.24 |
| 2023/24 | 28,060 | 10,974 | 39.11% | £58.81 |
| 2022/23 | 28,328 | 11,215 | 39.59% | £58.10 |
| 2021/22 | 24,555 | 11,049 | 45.00% | £51.11 |
| 2020/21 | 9,493 | 4,625 | 48.72% | £47.21 |
| 2019/20 | 19,959 | 8,451 | 42.34% | £54.32 |
| 2018/19 | 19,187 | 8,219 | 42.84% | £53.69 |
| 2017/18 | 18,807 | 8,347 | 44.38% | £51.82 |
| 2016/17 | 19,973 | 9,137 | 45.75% | £50.28 |
| 2015/16 | 17,952 | 8,547 | 47.61% | £48.31 |
| 2014/15 | 15,543 | 7,618 | 49.01% | £46.93 |
| 2013/14 | 14,218 | 6,984 | 49.12% | £46.82 |
| 2012/13 | 10,195 | 5,773 | 56.63% | £40.62 |
| 2011/12 | 11,968 | 6,905 | 57.70% | £39.86 |
| 2010/11 | 11,237 | 6,728 | 59.87% | £38.41 |
| 2009/10 | 11,720 | 7,186 | 61.31% | £37.51 |
| 2008/09 | 11,247 | 6,901 | 61.36% | £37.48 |
| 2007/08 | 13,376 | 8,243 | 61.63% | £37.32 |
Theory test centres near Dudley
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wolverhampton | 6 mi | 36,811 | 40.26% | £57.13 |
| Birmingham | 8 mi | 78,958 | 40.64% | £56.60 |
| Sutton Coldfield | 12 mi | 23,976 | 42.57% | £54.03 |
| Redditch | 15 mi | 16,042 | 48.40% | £47.52 |
| Worcester | 23 mi | 15,633 | 47.62% | £48.30 |
More centres on the the West Midlands page, which covers 11 centres and 305,240 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.