I once knew a guy who used to draw fantastic pictures of dogs. At the beginning of his Art course his teacher was very proud of his drawings and always showed them to the class. Then the course proceeded, and the guy was taught how to draw anatomically accurate illustrations of dogs. Soon, whenever he drew a dog, he would focus on making each circle and shade perfect, rather than focusing on capturing the shagginess or personality of that individual dog. The teacher never showed his work anymore, and he stopped loving to draw.
I hated GCSE Art - mostly due to the teacher - but I can say at A Level you ARE given a lot more freedom. Art is an extremely difficult thing to grade, and by showing how other artists inspired your work, it’s given more validity and credit. At GCSE you literally copy (and slightly personalise), but at A level you produce works inspired by artists and may ultimately produce original pieces that are very loosely related to existing works. You just need to show how you got to point B from point A.
Obviously, in the actual art world people are always looking for originality, but taking inspiration never hurts; nothing is truly original. It’s a very frustrating system and can really squeeze the passion out of you. Art is probably one of the toughest subjects out there and it takes a lot of perseverance, but as you already recognise this I’m sure you’ll be successful.
Art is uncompromising, and life is full of compromises.