This thread highlights the huge range in the quality of instruction in this country. That then means the panel examiners and the chief pilots should be doing more to ensure that instructors are telling PPL students where and how to get all the information needed to properly plan a flight. But I do think pilots are as much to blame as anyone. In my time as an instructor I saw all too many SF hirers who simply wanted to turn up and fire up and go. Persuading them to do proper pre flight planning was a constant battle. There are many places in the country where NOTAMs are rare and when combined with the frequency with which the average PPL flies, they maybe check the first few times but then give up because they never see anything that affects them.
A good example is the west coast of Scotland at the moment. Normally extremely quiet, but at the moment..... there's a war on. And the NOTAMs contains nuggets such as :
LIVE FIRING WILL TAKE PLACE WI AND ABOVE THE CONFINES OF EGD803 OUTSIDE PUBLISHED HOURS OF OPERATION. THIS AIRSPACE DOES NOT COMMAND DANGER AREA STATUS.
Quite how live firing doesn't command Danger Area Status is beyond me.