I think a lot of us have been short-changed in our training. I was told about the notams when I did my PPL but never taught how to understand them. I was, however, taught about the freephone "Royal Flights" number and expected to use it before any cross-country flight. At that time, the freephone number seemed to be prominently displayed at every airfield and in every briefing room both in posters and in the diamond shaped sticker. I'm not certain, but I don't think it has so much prominence now. Could this be a factor?
I didn't learn how to understand the NOTAMS until I was training for my Instrument Rating (5 years after getting a licence) and it was a revelation to me when I was shown that all the information was in lattitude order and therefore easy to quickly find the relevent bits. In the meantime I had done IMC and Night ratings, but it is a sad reflection on the training organisations that I was never shown how to interpret notams properly and was still just "muddling through". For the IR, however, it was essential to be able to use notams quickly because for the CAA IR flight test the examiner only gives you 45 mins to plan his route (including answering questions on danger areas active etc), book the approaches, file the flight plan, and do the weight and balance and fuel logs. I wouldn't like to have to meet this deadline with the present system, but presumably some people have to.
I preferred the old notams in lattitude order because I could rapidly locate relevent information. With the new system it seems (to me) to be too mixed up, and takes (me) much longer.
We need to look for solutions, and I think one of those is for flight training organisations to ensure their instructors understand, and then teach, how to best access and interpret the notams (and other pre-flight information).