Most standardized testing is crap.
You get alot of them, such as the US College Board, that measure exposure rather than intelligence. So, an SAT score above 1200 does not certify you as smart; it certifies you as someone who was probably railroaded directly to the college track from kindergarten onward.
The IQ test in the US is not quite as bad as the college board. However, it does tend to stick to traditional assumptions about what material an intelligent person should have absorbed. For example, you can damn near bet on see someing Pythagorean geometry/trig on there.
So, again, standardized testing favors exposure to traditional values.
The BBC test, I have to admit, did make a real effort to diverge from that sort of BS. I was surprised that I scored 11/12 on analogies or whatnot, because I take a beating on analogies in US tests.
But, consider the GRE (US test for grad school). There, the concept of analogies goes something like:
BLUE :: CAT
a) DUCK :: THERMOMETER b) COCAINE :: GEODE c) COMMERCIALS :: STONE TOOLS d) ANIMATION :: NEMP
(NEMP is a political short-hand for Net Exportable Mobilized Power, a description of total power, political will, and armed force, derived from the good old days of zero-sum gaming a nuclear holocaust, and therefore is obviously as related to animation as blue is to cat.)
It is this sort of thing that muddles standardized tests.
And, if this were not funny enough, the majority of CEOs were C students in high school. The current US President limped thru college with a tutor, while his Veep failed, and so had his rival for office! Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard.
What does this tell us about the value of standardized testing?
If the only thing you have to cling to in this world is an IQ score, you are utterly screwed! Truly successful people are often total buffoons, because your internal initiative and will matter more than a test result, which is external.
If bombing the SATs, or rating an 87 IQ, or never bringing home As, convinces you to give up, then "passing" probably wasn't going to help you, either.
We can't stop here! This is bat country!