Textbooks in school will be replaced by smartphones, according to the incoming president of the Girls’ School Association.
President elect Louise Robinson, who is also head of Merchant Taylors’ Girls’ School in Liverpool, predicts that phones and e-readers will soon be commonplace in Britain’s classrooms.
"Taking on board the fact that textbooks will be on your mobile, whatever shape, name or type of fruit your mobile relates to, and therefore anywhere, anytime, any place... it's going to be a huge possibility,” she said.
Robinson also suggested that children would get more benefit from tablets and smartphones rather than reading a book.
Speaking to the Press Association, Robinson said: "The fact that they'll be able to access anything they want to, in advance of your lesson, so if you say 'the next lesson's going to be on the skeleton' what you can see online now in terms of the skeleton and where you can go with it, makes children have far more control over their learning than they ever could do before."
Robinson added that children still have to be taught how to access information, whether it's in "a book, a library or on a computer".
"You and I wouldn't send a child into a library and say 'go and have a look', you'd actually help them, show them where the information is to access, and which bits they should be looking at for their age and stage.
"But that doesn't stop them going 'I'd like to have a look at that one' and when you see a young child on their tablet, or internet, the magic that they are seeing in that information, the way that they absorb it and reflect it back at you is just wonderful."
"I can understand the concept that there's the smell of a very old book, I'm not going to throw them all on the bonfire at all,” she said.
"I do believe that there will be a time and a place for going in to look at an old book.
"But when you're doing class reading, why buy the hard copy?"