Part of the problem is, guess who, good ole Tony Blair. He decreed that 50% of school-leavers had the Right to go a get a degree, no matter how Mickey Mouse. So all the funding assistance for training was diverted into that ridiculous aspiration, producing a generation of degree-holders who can barely write a sentence but know all there is to know about flipping burgers.
As a direct consequence, apprenticeship schemes died out all over the UK, especially in aircraft maintenance.
If we were now reliant on apprentice schemes (including the excellent Service ones) to produce the new generation of engineers we would have very few qualified ones in a few years time.
As the extract from ELGD says, it's up to the CAA to decide if someone has the experience needed for a Licence. If they get that wrong then it's the CAA, not the system, at fault. My experience of the CAA at present is that they get nearly everything wrong apart from extracting huge fees for sod-all work.
Delay, procrastination and incompetence rule at Aviation House, and that applies just as much to engineer licensing and Airworthiness as to all their other functions.
Perhaps the new management can change things. But I doubt it.