He plans to modernise TAFE to better respond to industry needs with new cyber security and robotics courses for industries, including agriculture. A new school of entrepreneurship has taken over a building that once accommodated training for shoemakers.

New aged care centres will also be on or near TAFE campuses to give students practical experience in an area of strong jobs growth. The model is based on teaching hospitals near university campuses.

TAFE is seeking expressions of interest to build aged care centres on TAFE campuses in the city and the country and is expecting to announce the locations in coming weeks.

More courses will be offered after hours to meet the needs of "people who need to earn while they learn".

"As a public provider we need to be leading on that and not following," Mr Black said.

"We need to invest more in the development of our courses making people job ready and we have to focus our relationship on industry, making sure we are very contemporary."

The managing director will also create "one TAFE" by abolishing the system of 10 autonomous TAFE institutes around the state.

More jobs will be lost, but Mr Black will not say how many.

"There will be some pain, but we will minimise that pain," he said.

"Instead of 11 CFOs we only need one. We are going to continue to streamline our back of house.

"There is no reason a public provider cannot be efficient."

NSW Teachers Federation deputy secretary Maxine Sharkey said 5000 TAFE jobs had been lost in the past four years, but the union does not know how many more will go as part of the new "One TAFE" restructure.

The union is supportive of reducing duplication in human resources and finance departments across the 10 separate TAFE institutes.

"We are right behind the idea of taking away 10 or 11 social media specialists and putting that money back into teaching and learning," Ms Sharkey said.

"But we still haven't seen the details of the restructure."

Mr Black, who spent 25 years serving in the Australian Army before managing state government departments and utilities, said resources would be shifted from management to the delivery of skills training.

"We had 10 institutes fighting to be top of the queue to be at the top in Google. Now just have one entry and at the top," he said.

"It is important to be contemporary to make sure that we are designing training to support their success.

"Business is the one risking capital to make the economy go around. TAFE has an obligation to be leading in providing contemporary training to be job ready."

TAFE aims to boost the proportion of students completing apprenticeships and traineeships to 65 per cent by 2019

"We have a very unique social responsibility," Mr Black said. "We want to make sure everyone in NSW can access TAFE regardless of where they live or their circumstances."