By Mike Baker BBC education correspondent

There is a lot of simmering frustration and anger out there in schools, colleges and universities at the moment.

It's about money. This week's Budget statement just about kept the lid on the pot with promises of more money ahead.

But a boiling-over has only been postponed not yet avoided.

Colleges of further education are the "Cinderella" of education

Most of the attention has gone, as usual, to schools and universities.

But there is another, equally important, area of education that is feeling the pinch more than any other although it gets little media coverage, political attention, or public sympathy.

Colleges of further education are the "Cinderella" of education.

Without for a moment suggesting that schools and universities are the ugly sisters, FE colleges are certainly used to being overlooked by suitors carrying golden slippers.

Schools and universities

Schools get plenty of attention because parents feel closely engaged with their children while they are young.

Colleges provide courses for 3.5 million adults

As for universities, they remain a bastion of the middle-classes who form a formidable political lobby.

Yet, on the numbers game alone, FE and sixth form colleges are major players.

The 450 colleges in England and Wales educate twice as many 16 to 19 year olds as school sixth forms and they provide courses for 3.5 million adults.

In short, they educate more A-level students than the schools and more adults than the universities.

Adult education

Colleges are the main providers of adult basic education and technical qualifications.

That is not all - they also are the route into degree courses for 40% of university entrants.

Yet many of them are in a bad way. According to the Association of Colleges around one in three colleges are trading at a loss.

No fewer than 86 of them have been placed in the official "C" category which means they are deemed by the Learning and Skills Council to be in a "weak financial position".

Lecturers' pay

Meanwhile the colleges are heading for a major showdown with their staff who have just rejected as "insulting" a 1.5% pay offer.

The unions will shortly be balloting for strike action.

The rejection of the offer can hardly have come as a surprise to the colleges.

Lecturers are to hold a ballot over industrial action

After all, school teachers recently received a pay award worth at least 3.5%. Others in the public sector received similar above-inflation pay rises.

The lecturers' union, Natfhe, estimates the pay of FE college lecturers is already 12% below that of school teachers and this offer would widen that gap.

Unlike school teachers, whose pay is set by a Pay Review Body, FE lecturers still negotiate their pay with their employers, the colleges.

Principals, who may well be sympathetic to the pay demands, say they cannot afford to pay more.

Indeed they estimate closing the gap with schools would cost an extra �500m a year - money they don't have.

Mind you, cynics might observe that the pay of college principals has shot up since they gained financial independence from the local authorities.

Spending review

So everything hangs on what the Chancellor for the Exchequer pulls out of his hat in the comprehensive spending review in July.

The colleges say they need an extra �2.6bn for the next three financial years to get back on course.

In many ways, the FE sector ought to have grounds for optimism.

Living up to his "prudent" approach, Gordon Brown has always preferred to talk about increasing public investment rather than simply spending.

The colleges are at the heart of skills training and vocational education.

Skills shortage

In his Budget speech, the Chancellor emphasised that the economy is suffering because too many employers are "unable to recruit the skilled staff they need because of poor training".

So spending on the colleges would appear to fit into the category of investment.

However, the government insists colleges are already being better funded than ever before.

The Department for Education says funding per student is up by 16% in real terms since 1997.

That would appear generous. The Association of Colleges disputes the figures.

Financial scandal

Another fly in the ointment is the financial scandal that has surrounded a few colleges since they were given their freedom from local authority control.

Three years ago, one college was found guilty of claiming millions of pounds it was not entitled to whilst indulging in "extravagant" spending on overseas trips.

While it is unfair to tar the whole sector with this reputation, concerns over fraud have not gone away.

Special investigators at the colleges' funding agency, the Learning and Skills Council, are currently handling some 33 cases of alleged fraud and financial irregularities.

They receive new complaints at an average rate of four each month.

Around 70% of these cases relate to colleges (the rest to other training providers) and the majority of investigations focus on excessive funding claims and the falsification of student numbers.

So, although few would deny the importance of what the FE colleges do, it seems they are still in for a fight to persuade the government to give them the extra money they believe they need.