How many hours a week?

[LaChatte]

Could anyone tell me how many hours a week a secondary school teacher spends in front of their pupils. Is there a standard number ?
I'm trying to compare my job as an EFL teacher in France, to the equivalent in the UK (and other countries).

18 hrs teaching my subject.
15 years experience
2100€ take home pay
Extra hours are currently paid about 30€/hr.
Master degree minimum requirement.

Standard is about 23 hours per week for a teacher with no additional release time (which you would get for whole school responsibilities eg. Being the head of department).

With 15 years experience as a teacher in the UK, your pay could be anywhere on the teacher pay scale, although probably M6 and above. https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/advice/pay-pensions/pay-scales/pay-scales-fringe-outer-london-and-inner-london.html

No additional pay for overtime.

PGCE is needed, which isn't masters equivalent exactly.

Thank you, that helps. Is the pay in the tables in the link what you take home or does retirement and stuff come out of it before you get paid (not sure what the correct terminology is in English, in French it's ''salaire brute'' and ''salaire net'').

No, that's gross salary, before tax and pension and student loans.

£2100ish take home is similarish to an upper pay scale salary in most of the country (ie. Not London). People tend to be on these salaries after a minimum of 6 years, but you also need a bit of hoop-jumping.

Huh, that's not actually all that much more than we're paid here, but the work load seems so much heavier.
I'm asking because the government are currently trying to shake things up here and I was trying to explain to colleagues about all the extra things teachers have to do in UK (that seem inconceivable to us) as that would justify the much higher salary in England, but that's obviously not really the case!

Are class sizes similar? I think the national average is something like 24, but that number is slightly skewed by small rural schools with very few pupils. In towns most schools have around 30 pupils per class up until year 9, then it often goes up to 35-40 (although there are lots of classes that are divided into smaller groups for specialist subjects).

Fairly similar yes. In most schools, it's rare to have over 30 children in a class. There's a legal limit of 30 up to Year 2 (7yo). However, with current recruitment and budget issues, larger classes have become much more common in the last decade. I've taught as low as 24 and as high as 34.

Actually, in terms of the monthly take-home, perhaps my estimate is worse than it should be, as I'm still paying off a hefty student loan for uni and teacher training fees, which is nearly £200 per month. Most teachers will be paying these off for quite a few years though.

£200 a MONTH 😱. We don't really have student loans here. You can obviously go to the bank and get a loan as a student but it's usually to buy a car for example (and you have to pay it back as you would any other loan through the bank).
University fees (in state funded unis) are around 300€ a year for students who aren't ''boursier'', ie unless your parents earn over a certain amount (I'd have to look it up but at a guess I'd say probably about 45k) then you don't pay the fee and you get a grant so many young teachers here start the job with little to no debt.
Recruitment is at an all time low, and the government are trying to make the job more attractive (obviously failing), by promising better salaries, but it's not working. People have a pretty low opinion of teachers (they think that we spend 18 hours a week working and that we're on holiday for half the year, yet no-one wants to sign up for the job, funny that!).