This article reports on a critical policy study on refugee education in two states of Australia, which involved an analysis of policy documents and interviews with policy developers. The findings show that policy development for students from refugee backgrounds is affected by structures including ways of knowing refugees, desires to measure their linguistic 'performance' and the internal structures of the organisations in which policies are developed. These structures shape and are shaped by the actions of individual policy makers as agents. Without awareness of these structures in policy making, they can inadvertently reinforce deficit framings of student groups such as refugees.