Pressure on the NHS has dominated the news in recent weeks.

Television cameras have filmed people languishing on trolleys in A&E departments, and the Red Cross has labelled the situation in hospitals a “humanitarian crisis”.

But the NHS is not the only public service under strain. Education unions have published figures showing that schools in every parliamentary constituency will be hit by real-terms cuts, and the National Audit Office has warned that education could suffer as schools are forced to find £3 billion of savings by 2019-20.

Only last week, TES revealed that there would even be cuts in more than a thousand of the small rural schools that ministers had pledged to protect under the controversial new national funding formula.

So why has the growing funding crisis in schools failed to break into the mainstream media and public consciousness in the same way as NHS problems? And can it be changed?

One group thinks so: Fair Funding for All Schools is a new parent-led national campaign fighting against the cuts. At a meeting last week, Matt Dykes, one of the campaign’s organisers, said that “for too long” schools have been “a little bit under the radar”.

For too long schools have been under the radar

Fair Funding for All Schools aims to make sure government decisions on school spending are “subject to the same intense scrutiny” as decisions about NHS cash, he said.

Madeleine Holt, a fellow campaigner, argued that the group could reverse school cuts by attracting a similar level of media attention to that received by the NHS.

“If you can get Sky News [into schools] reporting on the cuts and what they’re going to mean one day after another, over five days, you know you’re winning,” she said. “You have to kick it up into another level media-wise, where it becomes a talking point in pubs.”

Some say that hospitals are getting more attention than schools because they are simply more “media-friendly” and the evidence of funding pressures is more visible.

But Jonathan Simons, a former Downing Street education adviser, disagrees, arguing that the situations facing schools and hospitals are “not comparable”.

‘Bigger cost pressure’

The NHS has to make savings of £22 billion by 2020 - “far and away a bigger cost pressure” than that faced by schools, Mr Simons said.

“That’s why the NHS gets a higher profile,” he added. “It’s not because the media is attracted to hospitals, because they’re also attracted to schools.”

And even if the campaigners can give schools the same media profile, it’s not certain that extra money will follow. For all the recent sound and fury, the NHS hasn’t received any additional cash - yet.

Mark Dayan, of health thinktank the Nuffield Trust, said the government would rather talk about the money it has already given to the NHS. “The public finances look quite uncertain after Brexit, which makes it a difficult period to commit to anything in the future,” he added.

So is an attempt to steal some of the limelight from the NHS’ problems really the best chance of getting more money? Ms Holt believes Fair Funding for All Schools should also put pressure on Conservative MPs.

Tory backbenchers hold the key to forcing any government rethink

And Mr Simons agrees that, with Labour in disarray, Tory backbenchers hold the key to forcing any government rethink.

“They’re the people who exercise power in the system and they’re the people who exercise pressure,” he said.