I would try and look for an apprenticeship scheme with one of the big players, getting your foot in the door counts for lots more than a degree will
Depends what you mean by IT and what kind of position. In my line of work your CV will ditched if you don't have a Master in CS/Math/Physics from a Russell group and a PhD will put you in much better standing.
A Good CS degree from a good university is one of the most well respected degrees out there along with Maths, physics, Aeronautical engineering etc.
This is a much more theoretical career path which will lead into a variety of interesting jobs. It is certainly not a vocation course, don't even expect to be taught how to program or learn any particular language, you learn fundamental principles, theories, techniques, data structures, algorithms, analysis, complexity theory, computational models, information theory and a load a of maths along with it.
And to echo the above, good computer scientists are in massive demand, there is a very large shortage of suitable candidates. Our company is really struggling to hire sufficient developers- we might have to fold one of the projects as we simply cannot hire enough software engineers!!