Quite regularly these days I am faced with e-mails like this one:
I fully understand that moving overseas is a big step for people, and they want to do it with their eyes open. But to my mind, these are the wrong questions to be asking before you've even met people from the school, or found out a little bit more about the job itself.
If these are your primary concerns, I question whether you are in teaching for the right reasons. And I immediately get the sense that you will be the sort of employee who will be counting hours and reciting passages to me from the 'Burgundy Book'.
I've met many such teachers in my time and they are rarely any good in the classroom. Worse, they tend to be hopeless working at schools where there is a big emphasis on boarding and a vibrant extra-curricular life.
Teaching is a vocation. Yes, teachers need to be well looked after, but if you want o go far, you go for a job because you're looking for professional challenge and fulfilment, not because the hours are cushy and there's a nice-sized pay packet.
It's worth keeping in the back of your mind the chiasmus: 'Ask not what the school can do for you, ask what you can do for the school'.