How to add a school term schedule to your calendar
Updated September 2026
The term dates letter comes home once and then lives in a drawer. Here's how to get every date off that page and onto your iPhone calendar, without typing them in one at a time.
Term starts, half terms, inset days, the sports day, the parents' evening, the trip that needs a permission slip — a single sheet can hold a dozen dates. Typing them in is the reason it never gets done. Aide Calendar reads the sheet and creates each date as its own event, so the whole term goes in at once.
The short answer
- Photograph the letter — or screenshot the newsletter, email or PDF on your phone.
- Add it to Aide Calendar — up to nine photos in one capture if it runs over several pages.
- Review and save. Every date comes back as its own event; check them, drop the ones you don't need, and save the rest together.
Step by step
- Get the schedule in front of you. A printed letter on the kitchen table, the school newsletter in your inbox, or a PDF on the school app — all fine.
- Capture it. Open Aide Calendar, tap the capture button (the ✦), and take a photo of the page — or add a screenshot from your photo library. If the dates run over two pages, add both.
- Let Aide read the page. It works through the sheet and creates an event for each date it finds, keeping the description that goes with it.
- Review the list. Everything appears together before anything is saved. Fix a date, drop the entries that don't apply to your child, and add alerts where you want a reminder.
- Tap Save. The whole term lands on your calendar, synced across your iPhone and iPad.
What it picks up from a term sheet
- Term and half-term dates — first day back, last day, and the breaks in between.
- Inset and staff training days — the ones that catch you out because school is shut and work isn't.
- One-off events — sports day, school photos, parents' evening, the class assembly.
- All-day entries stay all-day — an inset day is kept fixed to its date rather than being given a time it never had.
- Anything with a time — a 6pm parents' evening comes through as a timed event, not an all-day one.
Tips
Do all the children in one go
If you have two schools sending two letters, photograph both and add them in the same capture — up to nine images at a time. It's easier to review them together than to do the whole thing twice.
Add alerts while you're reviewing
An inset day is only useful if you find out before the morning it happens. Set the alert lead-time on the review screen — a few days ahead for anything that needs childcare arranging.
Photograph the page properly
Straight on, in decent light, with the page filling the frame. A crumpled sheet photographed at an angle is the main reason a date gets misread — and you'd rather fix that before saving than find out in November.
Term dates change
Schools move things. When an updated letter arrives, capture the new one and check it against what you already saved — you can edit or delete the old entry from the calendar directly.
Common problems
It missed a date near the edge of the page
Retake the photo with the whole sheet inside the frame, or add a second photo of the part that was cut off. Several images are read together as one.
A date came out in the wrong month
Term sheets often write dates without a year, or in a table with the month in a heading. Tap the date on the review screen to correct it — nothing is added to your calendar until you tap Save.
It created events I don't need
A whole-school letter covers year groups that aren't yours. Drop those on the review screen before saving rather than deleting them afterwards.
Turn a photo, screenshot, message or voice note into calendar events and tasks — the date, time, place, people and phone number filled in for you. Free on iPhone and iPad, iOS 17+. No ads, no tracking.
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