North Berwick Theory Test Centre: 50.52% pass rate
DVSA recorded 291 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 147 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £45.53 of test fees.
North Berwick is one of the smallest centres DVSA reports, with fewer than 30 sittings in a typical month. Across April 2025 to March 2026 it conducted 291 car theory tests and issued 147 passes, a pass rate of 50.52% against the national 44.84%. That is the 20th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 3rd of 26 in Scotland.
Because more candidates pass first time here, the fee bill per licence is lighter than average: £45.53 of DVSA fees for every theory pass, £5.76 less than the national £51.29. None of that is a difference in price. DVSA charges £23 a sitting everywhere, and there is no discount for a retake, so the only thing that moves the bill is the number of attempts. The 144 fails recorded at North Berwick account for £3k of the £7k paid in fees here.
The recorded gender split separates the two groups at North Berwick: 52.63% for the 133 tests sat by women and 48.73% for the 158 sat by men, against a national gap of 4.20 points. That works out at roughly £3.50 of fee difference per licence.
Month to month the rate moves about. November 2025 was the strongest month here at 59.5%, January 2026 the weakest at 44.4%, and November 2025 the busiest with 37 sittings. A swing of 15.0 points across one year is normal in a sample this size and is not a reason to time a booking.
Against 2024/25 the rate slipped by 5.81 points, from 56.33% to 50.52%. DVSA has published 5 years for this centre. Back in 2021/22 the rate was 80.00%, so today's fee bill per pass is £16.78 higher than the same £23 fee would have produced then, purely because the pass rate has fallen 29.5 points.
North Berwick sits 14 miles from Leven, its closest neighbour, which recorded 41.61%. None of the five nearest centres records a higher rate than North Berwick, so there is nothing to chase even on paper. 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.
The lever a candidate actually controls is revision, not location. At £23 a sitting, a single failed attempt costs more than the £4.99 official app and the £15 book put together, and the £45.53 of fees a pass takes at North Berwick is 3.1% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive on this site's Scotland lesson band. There is also a clock: a theory pass is valid for 2 years, and letting it lapse before the practical means paying the £23 again from scratch.
Across Scotland as a whole, DVSA recorded 212,395 car theory tests at 45 centres over the same twelve months, a pass rate of 46.02% and £49.98 of fees per pass. North Berwick is above that regional figure by 4.50 points.
North Berwick at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 291
- Passes
- 147
- Pass rate
- 50.52%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 20 of 165
- Rank in Scotland
- 3 of 26
- Male pass rate158 tests
- 48.73%
- Female pass rate133 tests
- 52.63%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +3.90 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (56.33%)
- -5.81 pts
- Years published
- 5
- Region
- Scotland
- County or unitary
- East Lothian
- Nearest other centre
- Leven, 14 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to North Berwick
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against North Berwick'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 | North Berwick | Scotland | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 50.52% | 46.02% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 1.98 | 2.17 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £45.53 | £49.98 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £22.53 | £26.98 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | -£5.76 | -£1.31 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £3,312 | £2.6m | £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 North Berwick's rate the theory fee works out at 3.1% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive, alongside lessons at about £31 an hour on this site's Scotland band. 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.
North Berwick month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month November 2025 at 59.5%, weakest January 2026 at 44.4%, busiest November 2025 with 37 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 25 | 34 | 17 | 50.0% | £46.00 |
| Nov 25 | 37 | 22 | 59.5% | £38.68 |
| Jan 26 | 36 | 16 | 44.4% | £51.75 |
9 months of this year are withheld by DVSA at this centre because the numbers involved were small enough to risk identifying an individual.
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at North Berwick. 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 | 291 | 147 | 50.52% | £45.53 |
| 2024/25 | 332 | 187 | 56.33% | £40.83 |
| 2023/24 | 404 | 232 | 57.43% | £40.05 |
| 2022/23 | 379 | 198 | 52.24% | £44.03 |
| 2021/22 | 20 | 16 | 80.00% | £28.75 |
Theory test centres near North Berwick
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leven | 14 mi | 423 | 41.61% | £55.28 |
| Edinburgh | 20 mi | 42,186 | 49.48% | £46.48 |
| Dundee | 29 mi | 18,928 | 46.65% | £49.31 |
| Galashiels | 31 mi | 3,760 | 49.81% | £46.17 |
| Berwick | 34 mi | 1,002 | 45.61% | £50.43 |
More centres on the Scotland page, which covers 45 centres and 212,395 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.