"We spent a lot of the last two years telling children you need to stay home because it's safe, now we say you can come to school ... and for a child that's a lot," Ms Osman said.

"If you don't feel in a happy-enough space and don't feel safe, you can't learn as your brain is busy trying to do all the other things and can't be taking on learning."

Buninyong is one of four Ballarat region primary schools that has been part of a 100-school pilot Mental Health in Primary Schools program across the state designed to improve the capacity of schools to support students' mental health and wellbeing needs.

Following the success of the trial, Victorian education minister James Merlino announced the program would be rolled out to every Victorian government, Catholic and low-fee independent primary school over the next four years - making it the biggest single investment in student mental health in Australian history.

By 2026, every primary school will employ a mental health and wellbeing leader to implement a whole-school approach to wellbeing, supporting individual students, helping teachers better identify and support at-risk students and building relationships and referral pathways to local mental health services.

Half of all cases of anxiety, mood, impulse control and substance use disorders manifest by the age of 14 and research has shown students with mental health concerns are behind their peers in grade three and fall further behind throughout school.

Pilot schools including Ballarat Primary School (Dana Street), Lucas and Alfredton primary schools, have worked with the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the University of Melbourne to implement the program. More than 95 per cent of mental health and wellbeing leaders at pilot schools said the program improved their ability to support student mental health and wellbeing as well as social, academic and vocational outcomes.

"If you look at any child in primary or secondary school they have missed two years of continuity," Ms Osman said. "When students came back from lockdown they would feel nervous about being around people, there was a lot of separation anxiety, a lot of students just wanted to be at home - it set a lot of students back in their social interactions.

"All those skills you practice every single day at school around social interaction, students were not practicing them at home. It set some back with social interactions and friendships and made them quite isolated."

The Mental Health in Primary Schools program is not just about getting back on their feet after the pandemic but to provide early intervention for the growing levels of mental health issues in young people.

"There's a lot of research and a lot of training that go in to it and it's to develop a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing that is all about prevention. It's about building capacity of the staff and capacity of students around resilience and wellbeing.

"If we can put in preventative processes in primary aged children hopefully we can help teens and adults," Ms Osman said.

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Depending on the size of the school, mental health and wellbeing leaders will be appointed either part time or full time and 400 to 450 schools per year will be trained over the next three years with at least a third of those each year in regional and rural areas.

Mr Merlino said parent surveys had shown that children from pilot schools had better mental health at home compared to students in non-participating schools.

"The evidence is really clear it's making the world of difference. It's young people, and the whole of the school, being confident in talking about mental health, confident in early identification and confident in referring to other support services," he said.

Mr Merlino also introduced to parliament the new Mental Health and Wellbeing Act which will establish several new mental health entities including regional Mental Health and Wellbeing Boards, a new Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission and Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing Victoria and overhaul the current Mental Health Act.

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