Thanks for your responses. I think that what I would ultimately want to find is a school where the load is reasonable in the first place - not to negotiate for a lighter load.

I guess we all know of schools where 'the streets are paved with gold' in the areas we are currently working. I'm just not sure it is so easy to find them when the time comes to move on if there is no word of mouth to rely on. This site provides some answers, but is not exactly objective ...

I wish that I'd known more about my current school, one with good reviews on this site, before I accepted the position.

Hi there
New to the forum, but not to international teaching. After 20+ years teaching at home and abroad I have enough to finance a hiatus of around 12 months and plan to take time to smell the roses.

My question is about interviewing when I'm ready to come back. I know that I have no desire to work the hours that I am currently working. I've always thought that asking too much about timetabled hours in an interview made you sound lazy, but now I'm not so sure. How do people feel about pinning the interviewer down about: ratio of contact/non contact time; class size; number of classes per full-time teacher; equity of teaching loads within the school?

I've always been prepared to work hard, but I think that there is a tipping point between working hard for your students and an unreasonable load that makes it virtually impossible to do a great job.

Any thoughts on this?