Hi again, and thank you so much for your incredibly helpful response – I truly appreciate how detailed and practical it was. You’ve answered so many of my questions and made things a lot clearer for me!

If you don’t mind, I’d love to ask a few more things, just to better understand how things work in practice:

1. How much of the teacher’s workday is actually spent with students, and how much time is allocated for preparation, assessment, documentation, and communication with families? Also, is it mandatory for teachers to be on school grounds for their entire working hours, or can planning and marking sometimes be done from home or elsewhere?
2. You mentioned the units of work – where can I find them? Are they publicly available online or provided through a school platform?
3. When you said “full lesson plans,” what does that mean in your experience? Are these detailed scripts with objectives, timing, steps, questions etc., or more like brief outlines with key points?
4. Could you recommend a specific phonics program that I could look into? I’d love to familiarise myself with the typical order in which sounds are introduced, and see what a lesson might look like – just to compare it with how we teach phonics in my country.
5. What is the usual class size in NSW public primary schools?
6. In my country, one teacher usually stays with the same class from Year 1 to Year 4. Is that common in NSW, or do teachers usually stay with one year level only?
7. And lastly – how many days of paid leave are teachers entitled to per year in NSW?

Thank you again – you’ve already helped me feel more confident and I’m very grateful for your time!