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Child care charity the Daycare Trust urged schools to take advantage of the opportunity to develop "cradle to college" child care services at its annual conference last week.

The charity welcomed the government's plans to legislate to enable school governors to run child care and other community services as set out in the education white paper and consultation on early years education and child care.

Establishing such "extended schools" will provide a platform to create children's centres in every neighbourhood by 2010, claimed the charity, arguing that a national programme of children's centres is key to tackling child poverty and enabling parents to work.

By building on existing early childhood services in primary schools, neighbourhood nurseries, Sure Start and early excellence centres, 10,000 centres could be set up during the next 10 years at additional running costs of £200m per year, said the charity.

Speaking at the conference, the director of the children and young people's unit, Althea Efunshile, said there should be greater use of schools and early years settings for child care and community learning, but that child care needed to be modernised.

"Child care needs to keep up with the changing world and context. We have an increasingly diverse population and child care has to keep up with that fact."

Paymaster general Dawn Primarolo described the work as an important route to achieving the government's aim to abolish child poverty within a generation.