Staff profile

Vic Menzies joined Durham University in 2012 as a Research Trial Officer where she worked at the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) before moving to her current role at the School of Education in 2017. Vic has expertise in developing maths educational interventions ready for evaluation and in conducting education evaluations over a variety of settings. Her specific focus has been the evaluation of interventions using randomised controlled trial (RCT) methodology. She is currently Principal Investigator on a £450k grant from the Education Endowment Foundation delivering a large scale RCT of the ICCAMS Maths intervention where she has been involved in developing a roll out model of professional development for ICCAMS Maths and running a trial with more than 100 secondary schools across England. She is or has been PI or Co-I on a number of other grants to conduct large scale evaluations of educational interventions including two early years RCTs, an evaluation of Project Based Learning in secondary schools and two evaluations of Saturday School Programmes. 

She has previously conducted research on the development of number skills on starting school and has worked on a variety of research projects looking at different methods of peer tutoring to support maths attainment.

Vic has a BSc. in Psychology from the University of York and a Masters in Research from Strathclyde University. 

• Educational Evaluation
• Experimental Methodology
• Pilot Trials
• Development and Evaluation of Mathematical Interventions
• Effectiveness of Early Years education

• 2000: Nominated for Research Staff Award at Durham University 2017:
• 2000: Member of the School of Education’s Ethics and Data Protection Committee:
• 2000: Invited speaker at Royal Statistical Society’s event: The Rise of RCTs in Education: Statistical and Practical Challenges – 4th November 2018

Conference Paper

• Menzies, V., & Raine, S. (2016, December). A Large Scale RCT of the ICCAMS Maths Intervention. The Successful Recruiting of 109 Secondary Schools. Presented at 11th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences, York, England
• Robinson, L., & Menzies, V. (2016, December). Evaluation in the Early Years. The Maths Champions Programme: Challenges and Practical Considerations. Paper presented at Education Endowment Foundation’s Evaluator Conference, London
• Torgerson, C., & Menzies, V. (2016, December). Four randomised controlled trials and one quasi experiment evaluating a Saturday School intervention for disadvantaged primary school pupils: the Halle SHINE on Manchester and SHINE on Secondaries interventions. Presented at 11th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences, York, England
• Menzies, V. (2015, December). Pilot randomised controlled trials in education: A systematic review of current practice. Presented at 10th Annual Conference of Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences, York, England
• Menzies, V., Torgerson, C., Hewitt, C., Wiggins, A., & Younger, K. (2015, December). Piloting a prospective regression discontinuity design (with tie breaker randomisation) in the evaluation of a Saturday school programme for pupils starting secondary school. Presented at 10th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences, York, England
• Torgerson, C., Wiggins, A., Menzies, V., & Younger, K. (2013, December). Piloting regression discontinuity design (RDD) to evaluate the effectiveness of a Saturday School transition programme. Presented at 8th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences, Durham, England
• Torgerson, C., Wiggins, A., Menzies, V., Kasim, A., Hewitt, C., & Younger, K. (2012, December). Using an innovative randomised controlled trial design in an educational evaluation. Presented at 7th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences, York
• Merrell, C., Wiggins, A., Thurston, A., Menzies, V., & Younger, K. (2012, December). The use of local authority partnerships in school recruitment to a randomised controlled trial. Presented at 7th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences, York, England
• Thurston, A., Burns, V., & Topping, K. (2011, December). Using peer tutor-mediated metacognitive strategy to enhance mathematics attainment in elementary schools. Presented at American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, USA

Journal Article

• Burgoyne, K., Hargreaves, S., Akhter, N., Cramman, H., Eerola, P., Einbeck, J., & Menzies, V. (online). Lack of effect of a parent‐delivered early language intervention: Evidence from a randomised controlled trial completed during COVID‐19. JCPP Advances, Article e12279. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcv2.12279
• Younger, K., Gascoine, L., Menzies, V., & Torgerson, C. (2019). A systematic review of evidence on the effectiveness of interventions and strategies for widening participation in higher education. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 43(6), 742-773. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877x.2017.1404558
• Kokotsaki, D., Menzies, V., & Wiggins, A. (2016). Project-based learning: a review of the literature. Improving Schools, 19(3), 267-277. https://doi.org/10.1177/1365480216659733
• Muldoon, K., Towse, J., Simms, V., Perra, O., & Menzies, V. (2013). A longitudinal analysis of estimation, counting skills, and mathematical ability across the first school year. Developmental Psychology, 49(2), 250-257. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028240
• Muldoon, K., Simms, V., Towse, J., Menzies, V., & Yue, G. (2011). Cross-cultural comparisons of 5-year-olds’ estimating and mathematical ability. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 42(4), 669-681. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022111406035
• Wiggins, S., & Burns, V. (2009). Research methods in practice: The development of problem-based learning materials for teaching qualitative research methods to undergraduate students. Psychology Learning and Teaching, 8(1), 29-33. https://doi.org/10.2304/plat.2009.8.1.29

Presentation

• Menzies, V. (2015, December). The Durham Shared Maths Project: Challenges encountered during a real large-scale randomised controlled trial. Paper presented at Royal Statistical Society’s: The Rise of RCTs in Education: Statistical and Practical Challenges, London

Report

• Robinson-Smith, L., Whiteside, K., Torgerson, C., Fairhurst, C., Podmore, D., Davill, T., Bell, K., Qi, X., Leggett, H., Elliott, L., Hewitt, C., Baird, K., Menzies, V., Torgerson, D., & Ainsworth, H. (2024). Independent evaluation of Maths Champions in nursery to develop children’s early numeracy: A two-armed cluster randomised controlled trial. Evaluation Report. Education Endowment Foundation
• Menzies, V., Eerola, P.-S., Zhang, Q., Cramman, H., & Einbeck, J. (2024). Evaluating the impact of the Parents and Children Together (PACT) programme on the language skills of 3- to 4-year-old nursery children A two-armed randomised trial. Educational Endowment Foundation
• Qi, X., Menzies, V., Siddiqui, N., Ismail, N., & Oughton, R. (2023). Independent evaluation of the Early Years Conversation Project (EYCP): A two-armed cluster randomised waitlist-controlled trial. Education Endowment Foundation
• Menzies, V., Cramman, H., Eerola, P., Hugill-Jones, J., Akhter, N., & Einbeck, J. (2022). Parents and Children Together (PACT) Evaluation Report. [No known commissioning body]
• Cramman, H., Moger, P., & Menzies, V. (2021). The impact of Covid-19 on the English education teaching and learning environment and how this relates to sustaining and developing creativity, creative thinking and teaching for creativity - A literature review. [No known commissioning body]
• Evaluation Protocol. [No known commissioning body]
• Cramman, H., Menzies, V., Gray, H., Mee, D., & Eerola, P. (2020). Baseline Evaluation of the Durham Commission on Creativity and Education Report. [No known commissioning body]
• Robinson-Smith, L., Menzies, V., Cramman, H., Wang, Y. (., Fairhurst, C., Hallett, S., Beckmann, N., Merrell, C., Torgerson, C., Stothard, S., & Siddiqui, N. (2019). EasyPeasy: Learning through play. Evaluation Report. [No known commissioning body]
• Robinson-Smith, L., Fairhurst, C., Stone, G., Bell, K., Elliott, L., Gascoine, L., Hallett, S., Hewitt, C., Hugill, J., Torgerson, C., Torgerson, D., Menzies, V., & Ainsworth, H. (2018). Maths Champions: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary. [No known commissioning body]
• Menzies, V., Hewitt, C., Kokotsaki, D., Collyer, C., & Wiggins, A. (2016). Project Based Learning: Evaluation report and executive summary. [No known commissioning body]
• Menzies, V., Kasim, A., Kokotsaki, D., Hewitt, C., Akhter, N., Collyer, C., Younger, K., Wiggins, A., & Torgerson, C. (2016). Hallé SHINE on Manchester: Evaluation report and executive summary. Education Endowment Foundation
• Menzies, V., Collyer, C., Kokotsaki, D., Hewitt, C., Younger, K., Wiggins, A., & Torgerson, C. (2015). SHINE in Secondaries: Evaluation report and Executive summary. [No known commissioning body]
• Torgerson, C., Gascoine, L., Heaps, C., Menzies, V., & Younger, K. (2014). Higher Education access: Evidence of effectiveness of university access strategies and approaches. [No known commissioning body]