The main contention of this paper is that the interrelationship between ideology and policy shapes both the overall organisation of refugee education and the operational practices and procedures of staff working to provide education for refugees. Accordingly, this paper tries to answer how the education dimension of the Syrian refugee crisis is managed by the central education authorities in Turkey by assessing the political dynamics and milieu regarding the education of refugees. Building on a document analysis and interviews, this article traces educational administration of Syrian children with a focus on the political dynamics at play affecting the status quo in national education agenda in Turkey. While the impact of the refugee crisis on the greater national education agenda is revealed, the trade-offs involved in adopting certain governance strategies including decentralisation and recentralization is explored.