Why do we put children through SATs if the high schools don't believe the results?

Taken from Independent 8th Feb 2007:
Secondary schools setting own tests
(Thanks to Andrew Ross @ Primary Teacher UK for mentioning this article.)

Secondary schools are testing 11-year-old students themselves because they lack confidence in national curriculum test results.
Headteachers believe too many pupils are being coached for maths and English tests throughout their last year at primary school to improve the school's league table position.
They may reach the required standard in the national curriculum tests but lack the necessary comprehension to improve their standards - and are forced to sit new tests three months later.
Sir Cyril Taylor, chairman of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, said there was not enough emphasis on oral reading skills in the national curriculum tests, which could help determine a child's reading confidence.
John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the national curriculum tests were designed to show what a pupil could achieve at 11 - but secondary schools wanted to know they could be expected to achieve by the age of 16. As a result, it was necessary to carry out more cognitive tests to determine what targets to set for individual pupils.

Well this is just great. It seems that high schools don't trust the SATs results. All the hard work that the children go through only to be told that their results don't really count, it's the high school's own results that do.

In my experience, our local high schools do use our SATs results in conjunction with our Teacher Assessments to decide how a child should be placed in sets. Well, each year I get to have a look at the results and I don't think they reveal anything that we didn't tell the school beforehand!

Surely, this article simply highlights a huge flaw in the SATs testing system - the fact that children shouldn't have to go through them at all!