Tim Firth, head of Wrekin College in Shropshire, added that it is increasingly important for young people to be equipped for the workplace when they leave school.
They need to have job-related skills, such as the ability to pitch a business idea, work as part of a team, and manage a budget.
Mr Firth made his comments to mark the opening of his school’s £1 million business school, which includes a boardroom, breakout area for collaborations, “hot desks” and a lecture theatre.
The school plans to invite business leaders to teach workplace skills in a setting that resembles the corporate world rather than the classroom.
Mr Firth said: “Young people today live in a very different world to the one we did. The challenges are new but they are such that we as schools need to think even more about how we prepare them for the world outside of the academic arena.
“University is not the only option. It has become a buyers’ market and too often it has placed too much unnecessary pressure on youngsters, including the most gifted and able academically, to suggest there is only one path for them.
“Alongside the academic drive and the push for A*s we need to be looking at how we give children the skills to cope with real life, which are necessary even for those who do choose university.
“It is important to create opportunities for children to experience a taste of real life much sooner than we may have felt the need to do in previous generations, to show their skills may lie in all kinds of different areas.”