I rather suspect that it might be. When I was doing my PPL(A), I never heard of NOTAMS until I was well into doing cross countries.
Different places, different methods then I guess. I got a briefing on them before my first Navex, and afterwards my instructor made sure that I had checked the NOTAMs before signing me out (he'd check them first, so he would know if I hadn't
).
Still, I doubt that there are many people that can get a PPL without ever discovering NOTAMs - IIRC there are questions on them in three of the PPL exams (Air Law, Flight Perf & Planning and Nav). They are no more obscure than Rule 5 or Class-A airspace, but the difference is that you can usually get away with ignoring the NOTAMs ... so I guess people do.