Asthma affects 1 in 8 children in the UK. Up to half of these are treated with preventative medicine in the form of low-dose steroids using an inhaler. The National Asthma Treatment Guidelines recommend when this treatment is not working other treatments are started. Studies to support this have taken place in adults but not with children. If patients are instructed how to use inhalers and are given information about asthma, they can control their disease much better. The first part of this study, lasting 4 weeks, will make sure the children and their families understand how to use their inhaler. All children will be given the same steroid inhaler to use and after 4 weeks those still with symptoms will enter the study proper which lasts for 48 weeks. During this part of the study the children will be given one of three treatments. These are:- a steroid inhaler + a dummy tablet, an inhaler containing a steroid and a long-acting reliever + a dummy tablet or a steroid inhaler + an active tablet. In this way the patient, the family and the researchers will not know which of the three treatments the child is taking until the code is broken at the end of the study.