There was a time when the public recoiled in shock and indignation at horror stories of chronic under-funding in schools.
We shook our heads in disbelief at tales of children having to share a text book or being forced to study in draughty, poorly-heated classrooms with leaking roofs.
The latter is not completely a thing of the past. But in recent years a lot of outdated, crumbling schools have been replaced and plans are afoot to do likewise to many more (although the Government's multi-billion pound Building Schools for the Future programme is not without contention).
What we have not been used to seeing until more recently times is schools sitting on significant stockpiles of cash.
Undeniably there has been considerable investment of public money in schools over the last decade. At the same time, funding has increasingly been directed straight into school coffers rather than distributed through local authorities.
Perhaps the stockpiles could be explained as a failing of headteachers more versed in the art of teaching than finance to effectively discharge their new-found responsibilities.
Indeed, it is often said that a modern headteacher needs to be more like a chief executive running a business than an old-style educationalist.
Some schools have made that distinction more formal by employing a CEO figure as part of the management team.
But it would be doing many headteachers a severe injustice to blame cash surpluses on a lack of financial skills.
Very often investigations reveal the school is prudently saving money for urgent repairs or some other beneficial capital investment.
That is fair and no one would criticise them for this. That said, there are cases where some schools appear to have being carrying surpluses for a number of years without adequately giving a good reason why.
In such cases, the pupils at these schools are getting short-changed. For it must never be forgotten that this is public money.
If the youngsters at these schools are not feeling the benefit of it, then it's a scandal. Rather than sitting in a bank, this is money that could and should be spent on better resources, school trips or extra-curricular activities.
Saving it for a rainy day represents a poor investment in their and the country's future.
