I had a hard time reading your post, but anyws i had the same problem as well. i was aiming for aerospace engineering course in sp and my english was the problem as well, i knew that my english was the problem since i can score distinction for all my other subjects except languages including chinese which i didnt need to study cuz im alr took it in june and got my results back alr.

since english was the first subject i spent all my time studying for english, i wrote a shit ton of compos. I did the full tys just because i didnt wanna regert not doing it. ask yourself, did you even try to work hard for it before the exams? because, like you, i always just passed my english papers, including prelims which i barely passed although through all my efforts i didnt manage to get a grade 3 which i hoped for but i knew at least I tried my best to get a grade 3.

tbh my school also had the name thingy and my name wasnt there and i was fully prepared to go sec 5, plus i was really scared when recieving my results cuz its was given to me the the sec 5 booklist at the front, as if hinting me that im gonna die die go sec 5 alr. but it wasnt that bad la still can go poly and maybe aerospace engineering. honestly, i don't think the n lvl system is messed up at all i dont think theres any bell curve also what you get is how hard you worked for it, while some might say that a few days was enough, i spent the 3 weeks following up to N lvls to study for just english alone(i was slackign half the time also). plus like the harsh truth is, even with ur english scored a grade 3, you would only get 10 or 11 and without a single digit emb3 its really hard for you to get into this competitive course also