Just read a book called "Recollections of an Airline Pilot" by Peter Orange, a retired KLM captain. He recalls doing full stalling at 10,000 ft with gear down and landing flaps in an actual DC8, as part of an FAA requirement. As the aircraft stalled accompanied by heavy buffet, he levelled the wings and applying power eased the nose down to regain speed.
At that instant his seat broke loose and he slid fully to the rear. The buffet was so heavy he was unable to read the instruments initially. As the instruments came into focus the altimeter was seen to be unwinding with alarming rapidity.
In his own words "the artificial horizon seemed to be almost a blank, until I spotted the Sky Pointer marker in approximately the 150 degree position indicating we were close to being inverted. Fortunately, I was able to roll the aircraft in the correct direction to regain a wings level attitude, despite my stretched position. With wings level I was now able to reposition my seat and recover from the dive towards a very cold looking North Sea. To avoid stressing the aircraft unnecessarily this recovery was quite gentle, and full control was effected several hundred feet above the water".
Angle of bank indicators can be at the top of the artificial horizon or at the bottom, as previous readers have explained. But once beyond normal angles of bank such as in an unusual attitude, the number of degrees of bank become academic since they could be beyond 90 degrees.
The author then explains: "If the Sky pointer is seen to move from its normal upright position, the direction of roll to return it upright is obvious.
If, however, its movement has not been seen (as in the case of the DC8 150 degree roll described earlier), then the direction of corrective roll to level the aircraft is not immediately obvious, particularly when it is in a completely unusual position.
In the incident described above, the whole episode had lasted barely 15 seconds, but we had fallen at some 30,000 feet per minute as registered on the FDR. As a result of this incident we installed an "Upset" switch in the simulator enabling us to train pilots in recovery from unusual attitudes. To our surprise, a considerable number of pilots had great difficulty with this exercise. Those who had the most difficulty were the pilots who had never undergone full aerobatic training."
Although the incident above happened in 1967, it shows that artificial horizons on jet transports had sky pointers (angle of bank indicators) at the top of artificial horizons even then. Even the Boeing B17 Flying Fortress had them so they are nothing new. Seems to me the OP has made a sound case to have the EFIS in training aircraft standardised to what is today considered normal displays with the angle of bank indicator at the top rather than at the bottom of the artificial horizon or PFD. This is particularly relevant in flying schools specialising in the training of cadets for airliners