The quality of maternity care of a nation could be determined by the quality of her midwives. The most important factor of given quality maternity care is improving the pre-service education of the midwives. A well trained midwife is an asset to her nation as this is not debatable in any society, as midwives are expected to practice in any health care setting. Based on this assumption this study investigated the causal effect of school type, entry qualification, teacher student ratio, academic self-concept, academic support seeking, teacher quality, and achievement in obstetric Anatomy and Physiology as determinants of pre- service midwives’ achievement in Normal Midwifery in Nigeria. Ex-post factor research type and purposive sampling technique were used. Five hundred and fifty-nine student midwives and seventy-three teachers from eight schools of Midwifery in Lagos zone of Nigeria participated in the study. Six research instruments namely; Teacher Quality (r= 0.80), Academic Self Concept (r=0.84), Academic Support Seeking (r= 0.74), Achievement tests on Anatomy and Physiology (r= 0.79), Normal Midwifery (r= 0.80), and School records were used. Path analytic technique was used to answer four research questions. Seven predictor variables were hypothesized, two had direct while five exerted indirect influences on students’ achievement in normal midwifery. It is recommended that midwifery education should be a post basic training and students should be encouraged, motivated to learn Obstetric Anatomy and Physiology because of its importance to midwifery practice.
Keywords: Academic Achievement, Normal Midwifery Course, Performance Indicators, Pre-Service Midwifery
