Bhubaneswar, Feb. 4: The higher education department's decision to introducee-evaluation only for the science stream has brought much relief to teachers.

The department, which had floated tender for the e-evaluation to select the service providers last week, conducted a review of the situation and finally decided that it would be a 'risky' affair to go with the process for all the students, especially because of the delay in implementing the project.

As many as 94,952 science students will take the tests. 'For this, we will need to train as many as 3,600 teachers,' said a senior official of the department. In case the department had gone for e-evaluation of all the streams, it would require the training of 15,000 teachers. As many as 3,71,920 students will take the Plus Two exams from all the four streams.

On January 30, The Telegraph had reported how the teachers and IT experts dealing with e-valuation were apprehensive about the process.

With just four weeks for the exams, many questioned the decision and preparedness for the huge exercise.

Officials connected with the project had expressed their concern over the time-consuming task such as procurement of infrastructure and setting them in place.

The training of teachers and delivering error-free results were the most difficult part because of the insufficient time.

'The government has come up with a very sane decision. We were actually very worried over he issue. You cannot expect teachers, who have been evaluating with pen and paper, to immediately do the same on screen with as much ease and speed. There will certainly be issues. The biggest concern of all is that the teachers are yet to be trained,' said Subhadra Jena, a senior teacher.

IT persons, who had implemented various automation projects of the higher education department in the past, also apprehended that the ambitious project might turn out to be a 'disastrous one'.

They had suggested that the department should go about the project in a phase-wise manner - either implementing it for the supplementary exams alone or for the vocational course.