Leicester Theory Test Centre: 40.41% pass rate
DVSA recorded 61,224 car theory tests here in April 2025 to March 2026 and 24,738 passes. The fee is £23 a sitting everywhere in Great Britain, so at this rate a pass takes £56.92 of test fees.
Leicester is one of the busiest theory test centres in Great Britain, handling about 5,102 sittings in an average month. Across April 2025 to March 2026 it conducted 61,224 car theory tests and issued 24,738 passes, a pass rate of 40.41% against the national 44.84%. That is the 157th highest pass rate of the 165 centres with enough tests to compare, and 12th of 13 in the East 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 Leicester takes 2.47 sittings on average, which is £56.92 of DVSA fees per licence, £5.63 more than the £51.29 national figure. The 36,486 fails at Leicester last year came to £839k in fees paid for tests that had to be taken again, out of £1.4m taken at this centre in total.
DVSA publishes the split by recorded gender. Women passed at 42.95% here against 38.45%, a difference of 4.50 points, where the national gap is 4.20 points. In fee terms the group with the lower rate spends about £6.27 more per pass at this centre.
Across the twelve published months the rate ranged from 39.0% in January 2026 to 43.0% in August 2025, with the heaviest month being January 2026 at 6,178 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. Leicester rose 0.70 points from 2024/25, and across the 19 years DVSA publishes for this centre the rate has moved from 61.06% in 2007/08 to 40.41% now. Applying today's £23 fee to both, the expected cost of a pass has gone from £37.67 to £56.92.
Leicester sits 21 miles from Corby, its closest neighbour, which recorded 45.13%. Grantham, 28 miles out, is the strongest of the five nearest at 47.82%, a difference worth £8.82 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.
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 £56.92 of fees a pass takes at Leicester is 3.9% of the £1,470 minimum cost of learning to drive on this site's Midlands lesson band, the closest published row to East Midlands. 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 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. Leicester is below that regional figure by 3.46 points.
Leicester at a glance
- Financial year
- 2025/26
- Tests conducted
- 61,224
- Passes
- 24,738
- Pass rate
- 40.41%
- Rank, Great Britainhighest pass rate first
- 157 of 165
- Rank in East Midlands
- 12 of 13
- Male pass rate34,578 tests
- 38.45%
- Female pass rate26,646 tests
- 42.95%
- Gender gapfemale minus male
- +4.50 pts
- Year on yearfrom 2024/25 (39.71%)
- +0.70 pts
- Years published
- 19
- Region
- East Midlands
- County or unitary
- City of Leicester
- Nearest other centre
- Corby, 21 mi
- SnapshotDVSA table DRT112A
- 2026-09-05
The £23 fee, applied to Leicester
The theory test fee does not vary by centre, so this table is the same £23 arithmetic everywhere, run against Leicester'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 | Leicester | East Midlands | Great Britain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pass rate | 40.41% | 43.87% | 44.84% |
| Sittings per pass | 2.47 | 2.28 | 2.23 |
| DVSA fees per pass | £56.92 | £52.42 | £51.29 |
| On top of one £23 sitting | £33.92 | £29.42 | £28.29 |
| Against the national average | +£5.63 | +£1.13 | £0.00 |
| Fees paid on tests that failed | £839,178 | £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 Leicester'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 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.
Leicester month by month, April 2025 to March 2026
Best month August 2025 at 43.0%, weakest January 2026 at 39.0%, busiest January 2026 with 6,178 sittings.
| Month | Tests | Passes | Rate | Fees per pass |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr 25 | 4,991 | 1,987 | 39.8% | £57.77 |
| May 25 | 4,656 | 1,824 | 39.2% | £58.71 |
| Jun 25 | 4,780 | 1,913 | 40.0% | £57.47 |
| Jul 25 | 4,895 | 2,083 | 42.5% | £54.05 |
| Aug 25 | 5,371 | 2,312 | 43.0% | £53.43 |
| Sep 25 | 5,288 | 2,165 | 40.9% | £56.18 |
| Oct 25 | 4,832 | 1,933 | 40.0% | £57.49 |
| Nov 25 | 4,765 | 1,893 | 39.7% | £57.89 |
| Dec 25 | 3,494 | 1,400 | 40.1% | £57.40 |
| Jan 26 | 6,178 | 2,407 | 39.0% | £59.03 |
| Feb 26 | 5,820 | 2,377 | 40.8% | £56.31 |
| Mar 26 | 6,154 | 2,444 | 39.7% | £57.91 |
What the pass rate alone has done to the bill
Today's £23 fee applied to each year's published pass rate at Leicester. 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 | 61,224 | 24,738 | 40.41% | £56.92 |
| 2024/25 | 54,335 | 21,578 | 39.71% | £57.92 |
| 2023/24 | 48,336 | 19,208 | 39.74% | £57.88 |
| 2022/23 | 45,460 | 17,799 | 39.15% | £58.74 |
| 2021/22 | 41,815 | 18,259 | 43.70% | £52.67 |
| 2020/21 | 11,466 | 5,378 | 46.90% | £49.04 |
| 2019/20 | 33,978 | 14,343 | 42.21% | £54.49 |
| 2018/19 | 32,009 | 13,694 | 42.78% | £53.76 |
| 2017/18 | 33,008 | 14,410 | 43.66% | £52.68 |
| 2016/17 | 33,538 | 15,218 | 45.38% | £50.69 |
| 2015/16 | 32,152 | 15,198 | 47.27% | £48.66 |
| 2014/15 | 28,779 | 14,152 | 49.17% | £46.77 |
| 2013/14 | 26,376 | 13,202 | 50.05% | £45.95 |
| 2012/13 | 20,585 | 11,945 | 58.03% | £39.64 |
| 2011/12 | 23,331 | 13,861 | 59.41% | £38.71 |
| 2010/11 | 22,411 | 13,533 | 60.39% | £38.09 |
| 2009/10 | 22,436 | 13,855 | 61.75% | £37.24 |
| 2008/09 | 21,612 | 13,592 | 62.89% | £36.57 |
| 2007/08 | 25,995 | 15,873 | 61.06% | £37.67 |
Theory test centres near Leicester
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corby | 21 mi | 11,626 | 45.13% | £50.96 |
| Coventry | 22 mi | 48,874 | 43.29% | £53.13 |
| Nottingham | 22 mi | 42,273 | 46.64% | £49.31 |
| Derby | 25 mi | 35,069 | 44.71% | £51.44 |
| Grantham | 28 mi | 6,552 | 47.82% | £48.10 |
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.