Colour-magnitude diagrams in the Washington system are presented for the first time for five star clusters projected on to the outer region of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The clusters are found to have ages in the range 0.1-1.0Gyr, as derived from the fit of isochrones with Z=0.004. This sample increases substantially the number of young clusters in the outer SMC - particularly in the south-east quadrant - with well-derived parameters. We combine our results with those for other clusters in the literature to derive as large and homogeneous a data base as possible (totalling 49 clusters) in order to study global effects.