Does the UK put too much emphasis on college?

I ask this from my personal experience with education, but back in school there was a lot of emphasis put on going to college or sixth form and almost every other form of accessing higher education/higher learning potential went overlooked.

In the end I went to college because I felt like it was the best option at the time. I took Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics and Biology. With Physics and Biology I just scraped through to the second year and in Maths and Chemistry I failed. I was forced to drop Chemistry and replaced it with AS English Language and Maths I was allowed to redo the year but in the end failed again.

By the end, university felt it was far beyond my grasp and I felt like a complete and utterly failure and after just went straight into looking for employment. Within 2 years I only managed to acquire part-time casual jobs.

Reading the paper one day, I saw there were a shortage in Mathematics teachers (and yeah I failed AS Level Mathematics twice but this still interested me) and on a long shot that I might be able to follow this goal, I looked if there was a way aside from going back to college I could do this. I found one of my local universities does an access course onto Mathematics and Engineering degrees so I applied for this and I am now doing a BSc Honours in Mathematics with Education and Qualified Teacher Status and enjoying it way more than I ever did college.

I fall at a bit of a disadvantage by lacking an A-Level in Mathematics but overall I am enjoying it.

I just wished I'd known sooner I had more options than my school had made apparent the years up to me leaving.

Do you think too much emphasis is put on college?