This article is based on a research project completed in 2000 which examined the processes involved in target-setting in primary schools and its relationship to school improvement. It seeks to identify the stages of the process and to describe a range of teaching staff involvement in its management. The findings indicate that in general schools have been willing to adopt the target-setting agenda fairly readily and found it helpful in terms of pupil improvement and performance management.However, as pupils are squeezed harder and harder to achieve ever-increasing targets, a clear warning is sounded that sometime in the not-too-distant future the squeezing may no longer produce further benefits. (Contains 2 figures.)