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Resources to help prepare for the upcoming national examinations are now literally at students’ fingertips on two new Web sites that offer practice questions.

Adam Primakarsa, general manager of education provider Primagama, said the company introduced the practice questions on its Web site over the weekend, to allow students to prepare for the exams at home.

“We aim to train students to study independently,” he said. “As long as they have an Internet connection, they can practice.”

He said the exam materials could be downloaded from Primagama’s Web site, www.primagamaplus.com. Working with Microsoft, he said the company had developed exercises for students from elementary school, to high school.

“According to our observations, there are quite a lot of students who are actively using the Internet,” he said.

Adam said more than 6.5 million students in Indonesia were online regularly for social networking site Facebook.

“If they have access to Facebook, they must have access to the online tryouts,” he said.

The Internet, however, is still mainly concentrated in large cities in the countries, and access is difficult in remoter regions, even with the dramatic growth in the use of cellular phones offering Internet connection.

According to the Ministry of National Education’s Information Technology and Education Communications Center (Pustekkom), less than 20 percent of schools in the country have telephone connections, without which one cannot access the Internet.

Information released by Pustekkom shows that of about 258,000 schools across the country, only 42,000 have telephone connections. And only half of those schools — from elementary schools to high schools — are connected to the Internet.

Primagama’s Web site follows a similar site that was launched in Yogyakarta last month. The Web site, developed by state telecommunications company PT Telkom, says it has more than 5,000 test questions compiled from the 2006 to 2008 national examinations.

Benny Artono, the company’s general manager for eastern region consumer services, said the site — www.banksoal-online.com — was designed for students from elementary school to high school.

Benny said the company was working closely with local administrations to promote the Web site to students.

“We launched this in Yogyakarta because the city has the most schools and students compared to other cities in the country,” Benny was quoted as saying by Kompas daily.

The Web site launch was part of a program called Speedy Edu. Under the program, Telkom will reward schools that use its Internet connection service to access the online practice exams.

“The Internet is becoming an integral part of our daily life, and with the ever-increasing number of connections, we want students to learn how to use the service in a constructive way,” Benny said.

Despite controversy over their credibility, the national exams will begin across the country in two weeks. Exams for senior high school students will run from March 22-26, while junior high school students will take exams from March 29 to April 1.

The controversy began when a group of students, teachers and parents filed a lawsuit in 2007 seeking to eliminate the national exams because they claimed the quality of education offered to students varied from region to region.

Though the exams were not scrapped, the Supreme Court upheld a High Court ruling requiring the government to upgrade education standards nationwide before this year’s exams were held.

Satria Dharma, chairman of the Teachers Club, an independent teachers’ association, said that the idea of online practice exams was very interesting. However, he said students should be monitored whenever they had access to the Internet.

“Do they [genuinely] want to use the Internet to study?” he said.

Satria said it would be months before people could begin to determine whether the Web sites helped to improve the exam scores of students.

Adam of Primagama said that in the future, the company’s Web site would provide a greater wealth of learning material for students, including audio and video tutorials, online consultations and a social networking function.

Mansyur Ramli, head of research and development at the Ministry of National Education, said that as long as the practice questions followed the correct curriculum, anyone could provide practice exams.

“It will certainly help students pass their exams,” he said.

However, Mansyur also highlighted some of the dangers of the Internet, including the possibility that scamsters might try to make money from students by claiming to have the answers to the 2010 national exams.

“Even if students find leaked exam questions [online], they must not trust them,” Mansyur said.

He said that despite all the technological advances, the most effective way to study was still at school with the assistance of teachers.