Five female staff members at a kindergarten in China have been punished after photographing the genitals of more than a dozen boys in class.

The group of educators, including the kindergarten's 76-year-old founder and 37-year-old headmistress, took pictures of 16 boys' privates without informing the children's parents or getting their consent beforehand, police said.

They were given detention ranging from five to 10 days after the shocking incident emerged in southern China's Shenzhen city.

A picture from the Meilin Kindergarten's WeChat account shows the interior of the school in Shenzhen. Five of the kindergarten's female staff have been investigated and punished

The incident took place at the Meilin Kindergarten, which bills itself as a 'top class' kindergarten in Guangdong Province.

Apart from the founder and the headmistress, the other detainees were the kindergarten's 42-year-old nurse and two lifestyle teachers, aged 39 and 38, according to a statement from Futian District Police in Shenzhen.

One of the lifestyle teachers, Ms Zhao, repeatedly took pictures of the boys' privates with her phone before sending the images to other people on a popular messaging app, furious parents told a Chinese TV station.

Several parents receive an interview by a reporter from Guangdong Radio and Television Station after discovering that teachers took pictures of their sons' privates in the class

The kindergarten explained that Ms Zhao had snapped the pictures 'out of care for her pupils', according to the parents.

They said the kindergarten told them that the female teacher had seen some of the boys playing with their privates and wanted to seek advice from an experienced doctor with the images, according to Guangdong Radio and Television Station.

According to the TV report, parents discovered the situation after one of them queried in the parents' messaging group whether their children had had their privates photographed by teachers.

One mother, Ms Fu, says she was shocked and fuming after her son told her what happened

Several parents asked their sons and were devastated to be told 'yes'.

'[My son] said he was photographed three times a day by the lifestyle teacher Ms Zhao,' one mother, Ms Fu, told reporters, adding she was shocked and fuming.

Angry mothers and fathers stormed the kindergarten and found Ms Zhao.

They discovered the pictures in question in Ms Zhao's mobile phone and found out that she had been sending the images to her contacts on Chinese messaging platform WeChat.

It is said that the teacher had taken pictures of all of the boys in a class, and she had sent them to a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner on WeChat for advice.

The incident occurred in a kindergarten in Futian District (pictured) in cosmopolitan Shenzhen

Ms Fu expressed concerns over her son's future education. She said the boy had been traumatised by the experienced and refused to go back to the kindergarten.

Another mother, Ms Zhang, said the teachers should have informed the parents if they noticed the boys' 'unusual' behaviour, instead of taking pictures of their genitalia.

According to Futian Police, the kindergarten staff had violated the privacy of the children according to China's Public Security Administration Punishment Law.

They issued the penalties to the five educators yesterday.

They gave a 500 yuan (£56) fine to a 31-year-old male teacher, Mr Zhang, who also involved in the case, police said.

The 10-day detention to the founder Ms Ren and the headmistress Ms Xiao would not be carried out because Ms Ren is more than 70 years old and the Ms Xiao is breastfeeding her baby, the authority added.

Ms Xiao and the kindergarten's nurse have been sacked by the Futian Education Bureau.

The Bureau has vowed to give extra punishment to the others involved in the case.