Louise Robinson, incoming president of the Girls' Schools Association, said pupils were more inspired by the “magic” of using hand Ipads and other tablet computers than reading a book.
The comments come after figures showed a six-fold rise in the number of e-books – editions downloaded from the internet onto electronic devices – sold over the last 12 months. Amazon now sells almost 2.5 books via its Kindle reading device for every one hard copy.
Mrs Robinson, the headmistress of Merchant Taylors' Girls' School in Crosby, Liverpool, said the shift was having a knock-on effect in the classroom.
In an interview, she said: "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.
"But also, not only that, 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.
"One click and you're into another world."
Mrs Robinson said it was no longer relevant if textbooks were in hard copies.
Children still have to be taught how to access information from a book, library or on a computer, she said.
"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,” she said.
"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."
Mrs Robinson added: "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.
"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?"
The GSA represents 179 fee-paying schools educating more than 100,000 pupils.
Mrs Robinson, who becomes GSA president in the New Year, said she would use her 12 months in office to champion female entrepreneurship.
She is planning to organise a competition for girls on the topic, backed by Claire Young who reached the final of the BBC show The Apprentice in 2008.
Mrs Robinson said young women still faced problems in the workplace because they are "so nice about themselves, they're so self-effacing."
“it’s not in our nature to talk about ourselves in that way," she said. "I'm talking about learning the skills to do that negotiation. And to take their very good ideas and put them into action.
"And you can do that without having the bullying, nasty tactics that we do see in some of these reality programmes.
"You can do it in a very measured way."
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