It clearly managed it once, because all my events are on the iPad, but new entries are not syncing in either direction. The events created on the iPad say that they are on my gmail calender, but there is no syncing.

Which settings should I be checking out? Email works fine, but gmail contacts are also failing to sync (although all gmail contacts were transferred to the ipad when i set it up).

I transferred everything from iPad 1 (where it all worked) to iPad Air using itunes...so perhaps the events/contacts were transferred but the account details are the problem. Hmmm.

Any tips? Delete the cal/contacts account and start again?

How have you got gmail setup, if it is through exchange then google dropped support for this (on new devices) earlier this year

So what is happening (like you mention) is that the details got transferred through from iTunes but sync will not work)

Have a look at
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4944258

What you need to do is manually add a CalDav server (Calendar sync) and CardDav (Contact sync)

Thanks...I did recall hearing something about that but of course forgot about it. The thing is, my iPad 1 is continuing to sync contacts and calendar entries correctly (both directions).

OK... from your link old devices still work and new ones don't. But calendar and contacts are now supported which is the reason I faffed about with exchange.

The guy on that thread goes on about push (still) not being supported. I get the basic concept of push, but in this case am not sure what he is referring to. Pushing what from where to where?

You can ignore exchange, this dosn't work anymore (unsure if it still works for email only)

This is how I did it for Calendar/Contacts (am still on iOS6 though)

http://osxdaily.com/2013/08/27/sync-...acts-with-ios/

and then did the same but with CalDav option to get calendar

For email I went the easy route and just installed the gmail app

You don't need to go through all of that. Just remove the Exchange account from any new devices where it isn't working as this has been turned off by Google as previously mentioned.

Then setup a new account and choose Google as the account type. Once you've put your Google login details in it will give a list of what to sync (mail / contacts / calendars / notes) and you can choose what you want.

This keeps all the Google sync options under one account rather than configuring each individually and you then have on/off toggles for syncing of each in the account settings on the device once setup.

The only key difference between this setup and Exchange is that push updates no longer work. You can use the Gmail app if you still want push email but there's no options for push calendar and contacts now.

Push means that new data such as email, calendar updates, etc. is pushed from the server to your device so you get an alert on the device right away.

Pull, or more commonly called fetch is where the device does not know there is new data available on the server until it checks, either manually or on a schedule.