Which of the following is a fact mentioned in the passage?

Concept

A question that asks for a fact mentioned in a passage is testing literal comprehension: the required statement must be recoverable directly from the writer's own words, and nothing may be supplied by the reader. Three things routinely disqualify a candidate statement — it widens a hedged claim into an absolute one, it adds information the text never supplies, or it reverses what the text actually says. The working test is to point at the sentence that states it.

Application

The passage's account of the digital divide contains this sentence: "Students in rural or underserved areas often struggle to keep pace with online learning due to limited internet connectivity and a lack of devices." That single sentence supplies the group (students in rural or underserved areas), the shortage (a lack of devices) and the hedge (often). The statement that students in rural areas often lack access to digital devices restates it without widening or adding to it, so it can be pointed at in the text.

Contrast with the other statements

• All countries now offer free internet access — the passage records efforts being made towards digital inclusion, namely public Wi-Fi projects, affordable device schemes and digital literacy programmes; it nowhere states that free access has been achieved in every country.

• The internet reduces attention spans in all users — the passage lists attention span among the concerns raised by the overuse of digital devices, which is a concern about a tendency rather than a stated effect on every user.

• The digital divide has been eliminated — the passage calls the divide growing and says it exists both between developed and developing nations and within communities, which reverses this claim.

Result

Only the statement about rural students lacking digital devices can be traced to a sentence of the passage, so that is the fact the passage mentions.