In some schools, teachers said the large number of female educators, especially in lower grades, had a positive influence on students.

“We have a more intuitive sense of children’s needs,” said Li Yue, 36, a kindergarten teacher in Fuzhou. “It isn’t the responsibility of schools to teach boys to be boys. It’s the responsibility of parents.”

Chinese education officials, for the most part, appear to disagree. While men are scarce among the ranks of public schoolteachers worldwide, including in the United States, the gender imbalance is especially pronounced in China, where women occupy four out of five teaching positions in urban areas, according to a 2012 study by Beijing Normal University. China has 15 million schoolteachers and about 270 million students in kindergarten through 12th grade.

In some districts, school officials have pressured local officials to intervene, saying students are underperforming because they lack male role models. Boys consistently trail girls on college entrance exams, and disparities in academic achievement emerge as early as third grade, according to a 2012 study by the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

In recent years, education officials in Fujian, Guangxi and Jiangsu have created incentives for male teachers, arguing that men bring an energetic style that appeals to boys.

Still, it is not clear that children derive academic benefits from studying with teachers of the same sex. A 2008 study of 9,000 11-year-olds in Britain found no tie between male teachers and higher academic performance among boys.

Shanghai No. 8 Senior High School began an all-boys program for 60 students in 2012 with the goal of “reviving the masculinity” of its male students.