An exam culture that demands instant answers is harming children's ability to learn, the head of a leading choir school said today.

Jonathan Milton, headmaster of Westminster Abbey Choir School, spoke out on the same day that a group of MPs attacked the national testing regime for skewing children's education.

He said: “So many of our children these days are just used to producing instant results".

He added: “In so many of the testing arrangements they are expected to get the right answer very quickly, rather than having the opportunity to work through ideas to develop their understanding over a long time.”

On the same day as the Children Schools and Families Select Committee published a damning report on excessive school testing, Mr Milton advocated the holistic education of a chorister, which requires hard work and diligent practice. The school has just 30 pupils all of whom sing in the Abbey’s choir.

“We make expectations of our choristers which if colleagues in ordinary schools were to witness they would quite simply be amazed,” he said.

“They sustain concentration over a three-hour rehearsal or recording session and they take it all for granted, fitting it in quite naturally amongst all the other aspects of their increasingly busy school lives. Children are capable of quite extraordinary things given the right expectations, the right teaching and the right nurture.”

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