>(and I believe in many other countries), students do participate in the regular cleaning of school....
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>>But all students, not just the poor ones. That's very different.
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>But like I pointed out a minute ago, that opens up some possible issues. I think anything beyond cleaning up their direct obvious messes and anything beyond a "leave the place the way it looked when you started playing" is not necessarily a good idea.

One thing that does factor in is that there is a different mindset. The general attitude in Japan is that the school is "our school" (i.e. in a collective, the community - and the students are participants), so it is one's one interest to keep it clean and tidy. In that sense, it's not really "work" but rather regular duty, like chores at home. And there's nothing like a bit of peer pressure to get slobs to clean up their act.