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Overview

Victoria Menzies

Assistant Professor

BSc (Hons) MRes


Affiliations
AffiliationRoom numberTelephone
Assistant Professor in the School of EducationCA116 
Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing  

Biography

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. 

Research interests

  • Educational Evaluation
  • Experimental Methodology
  • Pilot Trials
  • Development and Evaluation of Mathematical Interventions

Research Projects

Awarded Grants

  • 2018: PACT Evaluation(£200777.00 from Education Endowment Foundation)
  • 2015: Evaluation of Maths Champions(£185602.00 from Education Endowment Foundation)
  • 2015: ICCAMS2: Increasing Mathematical Competence and Confidence at Key Stage 3(£509479.00 from Education Endowment Foundation)

Esteem Indicators

  • 0000: Invited speaker at Royal Statistical Society’s event: The Rise of RCTs in Education: Statistical and Practical Challenges – 4th November 2018
  • 0000: Member of the School of Education’s Ethics and Data Protection Committee:
  • 0000: Nominated for Research Staff Award at Durham University 2017:

Publications

Conference Paper

  • Torgerson, C. & Menzies, V. (2016), 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, 11th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences. York, England.
  • Menzies, V. & Raine, S. (2016), A Large Scale RCT of the ICCAMS Maths Intervention. The Successful Recruiting of 109 Secondary Schools, 11th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences. York, England.
  • Menzies, V. (2015), Pilot randomised controlled trials in education: A systematic review of current practice, 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), Piloting a prospective regression discontinuity design (with tie breaker randomisation) in the evaluation of a Saturday school programme for pupils starting secondary school, 10th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences. York, England.
  • Torgerson, C, Wiggins, A, Menzies, V & Younger, K (2013), Piloting regression discontinuity design (RDD) to evaluate the effectiveness of a Saturday School transition programme, 8th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences. Durham, England, Durham.
  • Merrell, C, Wiggins, A, Thurston, A, Menzies, V & Younger, K (2012), The use of local authority partnerships in school recruitment to a randomised controlled trial, 7th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences. York, England, York.
  • Torgerson, C, Wiggins, A, Menzies, V, Kasim, A, Hewitt, C & Younger, K (2012), Using an innovative randomised controlled trial design in an educational evaluation, 7th Annual Conference of Randomised Controlled Trials in the Social Sciences. York, York.
  • Thurston, A, Burns, V & Topping, K (2011), Using peer tutor-mediated metacognitive strategy to enhance mathematics attainment in elementary schools, American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting. New Orleans, USA, New Orleans LA.

Journal Article

Presentation

  • Robinson, L. & Menzies, V. (2016), Evaluation in the Early Years. The Maths Champions Programme: Challenges and Practical Considerations, Education Endowment Foundation’s Evaluator Conference. London.
  • Menzies, V. (2015), The Durham Shared Maths Project: Challenges encountered during a real large-scale randomised controlled trial, Royal Statistical Society’s: The Rise of RCTs in Education: Statistical and Practical Challenges. London.

Report