In reply to Bingers:
A-levels are far more important. The only scrap heap will be if he does a mediocre Uni degree. Also its ideal to choose some courses that are fun. My mother hates that I've had such an 'easy ride', but forgets that this is mostly because I always chose the studies I liked, not what people told me I 'should' do. Does the school run a DofE programme too? As this was a really helpful way of keeping my concentration going through the boring courses.
My GCSE's never really counted when I was looking for jobs as a teenager, as I you always put the 'expected' grade which can naturally be bullshitted for. They were only given a cursory look when choosing my A-levels, to make sure I was actually capable of doing the courses, they don't count in a UCAS application and are now redundant for the CV.
What I took really didn't dictate the courses I chose at A-level and only when it came to UCAS did I seriously start to figure out a suitable direction to go in.
I was a little nerd and took 11 subjects I think... Chem, Bio, Lit, Lang, Maths, Art, Geog, RM, French, RE, IT.
RE was a 'half' course and IT was some other kind of qualification, I have no idea what tho.
IIRC Everyone did the science double award, English language, IT and maths was compulsory, RE was also forced upon us at the last minute cause of some f*ckhead new teacher, everyone detested.
Everyone doing it took their English Lit a year early to free up timetable space and less exams.