diff --git a/FlagEmbedding/finetune/embedder/decoder_only/icl/dataset.py b/FlagEmbedding/finetune/embedder/decoder_only/icl/dataset.py
index 43cc8013..e04dc2ad 100644
--- a/FlagEmbedding/finetune/embedder/decoder_only/icl/dataset.py
+++ b/FlagEmbedding/finetune/embedder/decoder_only/icl/dataset.py
@@ -125,8 +125,9 @@ def _create_batch_data(self, batch_raw_data):
 
             passages.extend(tmp_passages)
             
-            if len(teacher_scores) > 0 and len(passages) > 0:
-                assert len(teacher_scores) == len(passages)
+            if teacher_scores is not None:
+                if len(teacher_scores) > 0 and len(passages) > 0:
+                    assert len(teacher_scores) == len(passages)
 
             # add icl pairs
             if self.args.retrieval_use_examples or (