The auditing culture and its concomitant, "performativity", have been at the core of the on-going public sector reforms of the last twenty-five years or so. The advantages and limitations of performance indicators as a managerial technique of control have long been known. Considered from an organisational, social and political perspective, it is now possible to evaluate the predictions made in the 1980s and 1990s. These focused on the consequences for the cultures of educational institutions and the emotional resilience of individuals--especially the children--within them, if techniques of this kind are inappropriately managed and emphasise the impersonal and quantitative. The article offers a compromise solution that balances effectiveness with humanity and spirituality, in the form of a radical performance indicator, namely, laughter.