Another vote for FAA - particularly agree with SASless post#5
I am British. I did an FAA fixed-wing CPL/IR in the early 80's - after the IR training, the written exam, about a two-hour oral exam before going on the flight test, then taking off not knowing beforehand where the examiner was going to have me divert to, self-briefing the approach to an airport I had never been to etc etc, I then had a pretty good understanding of how the IFR environment worked in the States. The training was all very practically based and all about learning things that would matter in flight and the real world. The exams were about making sure you knew how to really understand approach charts, en-route charts, where to access weather information in flight, etc etc.
I subsequently did UK CPL/H IR and CPL/A IR - I found the groundschool subjects very interesting academically but at the expense of learning anything of much practical use. The IR training was pretty much focused on knowing exactly what to expect at each point in the test, (i.e exam coaching) and very little else - at the end of it I did not understand the practicalities of European IFR flying at all, and it took a long time to then find out how it really worked in the real world.
The FAA system was practical, efficient, low cost - the CAA system was academic, inefficient (hurdles put in the way for no obvious reason than bloody mindedness), and eye-wateringly expensive (my CPL/H was fortunately courtesy of Mr Bristow, but my UK CPL/A IR was self-funded).
For me what proves the point is that FAA licensed pilots seem to manage just as well as their supposedly better trained (in the JAA view of the world) colleagues.