SPaG Test

Today saw the unveiling of the government's new Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation test. My classroom isn't usually set up like this!
As usual teachers are caught in the middle - having to implement a test on which the school will be judged, regardless of whether they believe in it's educational value. These two quotes sum up the arguments for and against:
Mr Gove (education secretary) says:
"The English Curriculum really does need to get back to basics...
What children are less familiar with are the rules of clear English and how to express themselves. Simply being fluent in text speak is not enough. It's absolutely vital children understand how to spell a range of words and know their verbs and adverbs. These are key to communicating. I know there are some people in the unions who worry about bureaucracy. But all I would say, as a parent, is if you can't get a child to spell and use proper grammar by the age of 11, then you are not fulfilling your part of the bargain."
Michael Rosen, highly respected children's author, says:
"The Spag test is a means to an end. As happens again and again in education, what happens is that the systems of assessment are not purely or only for use by teachers to assess children. They are part of a structure of controlling teachers, schools and education. This is called 'accountability' but in fact it's about setting one school against another in league tables. There is absolutely no evidence that this system of accountability 'levers up standards'. All it does is build failure in to the system. There is no evidence that teaching 10- and 11-year-old children the kind of grammar questions that they will face in next week's Spag test will help them to do anything better. The reasons are obvious: the work involved is highly abstract; talking about bits of grammar separately from the children's reading, speaking and writing is almost meaningless."

So- what do you think?
p.s. notice the misuse of the colon in the above text!