Thought that was standard training for the PPL syllabus? It's what I was taught to do, just assumed everyone else did as well.
Formal preflight briefing is certainly now a part of the PPL syllabus. It hasn't always been so, I don't know exacty when it was incorporated. Someone may remember?
It has been part of a glider takeoff in UK since at least 1981 when I did my silver C, but I don't think was generally done by power pilots at that time. For gliding there is a memnonic of CBSIFTCBE, for those who like such things, and the E stands for either emergencies or if you have a nervous passenger it seems to become eventualities.