I take it you are in the UK talking of A levels and I will give you some advice, please, please trust me on this - the education standards are dropping as prices rise in this country and it is not worth getting into £45,000+ of debt to get a degree at this time in our country. Go and do the apprenticeship and in your spare time teach yourself SolidWorks and the Adobe suite. This way at least if you want to go and do a degree at a later date and you are competent and design work and CAD packages then you could convince them to let you in at possibly even 2nd year level if you play your cards right.